Chapter One - The Old Void
Captain Redtail wakes with a sudden start. Despite his screaming headache, his senses are suddenly alert. Something has jolted the ship violently.
Capt Redtail knows this power well. This is not a blast. This is not an attack. This type of wrenching pull only comes from one source, the void of a lux portal.
A lux portal, an event horizon, a black hole. Whatever you call it, it is a power that very few in the universe truly understand.
Capt Redtail is one of those. He knows well the feeling of the power released when the flow of the infinite expanse of the universe is suddenly reversed. He knows the power of dark matter and how it sucks in all light and all time until it creates a point of singularity in direct opposition to expanse. The Capt knows the sickening feeling of all natural expansion suddenly halting, reversing, and condensing inward and downward to a point so eternally and infinitesimally small that it does not even exist.
The Capt knows exactly how it feels when all expansion and all contraction occur simultaneously. The resulting effect is a tear in the very fabric of light and time that binds the universe to the laws of physics. The result is a worm hole. A portal through the forces of reality to any place in the expanse. To all places in the expanse. To no place. To all existence and to no existence.
Without a tool to direct the void and a compass to navigate such a singularity, the void grows exponentially. It consumes matter. It consumes light. It consumes time. Such uncontrolled occurrences can swallow planets, stars, and even entire galaxies. These super black holes all started with an unattended event portal.
Capt Redtail has both the tool and the compass. As an anointed lux bearer, the Capt possesses the rare Hyperlux Orb. The lux orb is a simple yet powerful conduit that allows one to aim and to focus a singularity with purpose in order to traverse across the universe. To travel through space and time. The navigation tool is encoded in his mind. Thousands of nightmares about the void have taught him the only way through the juxtaposition of endless expanse and infinite contraction.
What woke the Capt is the violent shock wave that is generated from the opening of a new lux portal into the very flow of light and time. But he did not open this one. That is what terrifies him.
The Capt jumps out of his bunk and kneels at the ancient treasure chest positioned at the very center of his quarters. The chest is where he keeps the hyperlux orb. His most precious treasure. He palms the lock and scans his retina.
The chest is empty. The orb is gone.
His heart jolts violently with a sick feeling of fear and betrayal. He knows at a cognitive level this is the moment he has been desperately seeking all his life, but now the moment is here, he is not emotionally prepared to lose his treasure. To lose his power.
He scans his mind quickly to feel the bond with the orb. It is gone. Truly gone. The orb is truly absent from his mind. He feels a panic and a peace at the same time.
Capt Redtail leaps to the door of his quarters and rushes out on deck. The bright red giant star rising just over the deck blasts his overly sensitive eyes and makes his hungover head throb even more. He shakes it off and steadies himself against the shrieking solar winds.
With a squawk and screech, Voa swoops down from the solar sail to perch upon his shoulder. The Red-tailed hawk leans in close to his ear, the tangles from his loose red pony tail flapping around her in the solar wind.
She shifts her gaze back towards the sails and the Capt follows it. The moment he sees it, his eyes grow wide confirming his worst fear. The portal horizon looms over the ship sucking in light and matter into its black core. The solar wind condensing matter creates clouds of nebulae that form a disc around the black worm hole of the new singularity.
The sudden storm from the event horizon hits the sails with invisible violence and the ship rocks with the force. The pull of the worm hole is powerful. It will consume the ship in no time. Without the hyperlux orb to control the passage through time and space, the Jamaicensis could end up anywhere in the universe. Or it could end up nowhere just as easily. The difference between everything and nothing becoming equal inside the singularity.
“Beat to quarters!” Capt Redtail yells. A second later drums sound harshly across the deck. The crew appears in instant action and a controlled chaos. The solar sails begin to open, the artificial atmosphere around the ship expands opening a battlefield.
Anathra Cinn appears at his side. The dark windjammer is gripping a round black orb. Capt looks her in the eye with a grim sternness as he points to his empty palm then points to the open lux portal above the ship.
With a flash of surprise and then a nod of instant understanding, “Not from you?” She confirms.
Capt grimaces and shakes his head. “Can you raise the matter storm?“
Cinn closes her eyes and raises her stone. A clash of thunder rattles the ship as dark storm clouds begin to boil outward around the ship. These clouds of matter begin to feed the portal and satisfy its appetite for atoms. This stabilizes the pull of the ship from being sucked into the portal.
Voa, the elegant red-tailed hawk on the shoulder of the capt opens her broad wings and releases her clutch as she is swept gracefully upward into the expanding sky using the rush of wind that rolls across the deck and snaps the sails full.
Capt Redtail barks an order to his trusted first mate, Shikra Badius.
“Badius, I need you on the Bridge!” Then after a long pause he says more quietly, “Badius, don’t do this. Not you.” There is no response.
He shifts his gaze to the helm. Helmsman Nika Melierax is at there, her strong, sure hands ready on the deck wheel. “Nika,” Capt says calmly and firmly, pointing overhead toward the open portal above, “Bring us around so the starboard battery is facing that portal.
Nika nods affirmation of the order and the Jamaicensis leans as she bends into the swirling wall of the suddenly forming hurricane that surrounds the ship and the lux portal..
The voice of Blister Goshawk, sounds in his hear, “Capt, there is a ship emerging from the portal!”
“Shit! Brace for ion impact!!” Redtail yells. “Magni, shields up!!!”
An array of booms sound from the ship emerging from the newly formed lux portal. Streaks of ionized plasma trails stream outward from the portal towards the Jamaicensis. In the same instant, Magni Rostriss, second mate makes a lightning fast motion on the controls and lighting erupts from the solar masts streaking protectively around the ship. As the lighting and plasma connect, explosions rock across the deck from stern to port as the cannon balls blast upon impact. The ships shudders from the blasts, parts of it going dark from ion damage.
Redtail shouts, “Magni, Drop shields!” Then says, “Uni, Sing, fire Starboard array!”
The lightning winks away with a blast of thunder followed by more controlled series of booms and plasma clouds that fire in a coordinated fashion down along the hull of the ship. Ion balls rip outward from the ship and into the enemy ship. Explosions rip outward from the portal as the attack bursts into explosions upon the enemy ship inside.
“Blister,” Redtail says firmly, “keep a sharp eye for one of our escape pods heading towards the portal.”
Blister asks again seeming to confirm she had heard correctly, “Capt, you did not open that portal?”
“No. It was Badius... She’s stolen the Hyperlux Orb.”
Blister shouts, “Well fuck me. Wait, I see her. There is a pod. It’s there off the port at ten o’clock.”
“Good eyes, Blister! If you get a bead on her, fire!”
“Fire on…on Badius?” She questions with incredulity.
Redtail closes his eye and shakes his head sadly. “Confirmed. Destroy that Pod.”
More booms from the second pirate ship announce a second volley of incoming plasma fire. But Magni is ready this time. At the shield controls, she clenches her fist upon the controller in her hand and makes a stabbing motion towards the income cannon flares of the live cannonballs.
With a blinding light the sails erupt with lightning once again. It spiders in a flash outward protectively around the ship and the balls explode across the lightning net with violent blasts.
Anathra Cinn stands on deck clenching her black orb. She moves her hand into a swirling gesture and a tornado drops from the wall of clouds and spindles outwards towards the small pod.
On board the pod, Badius is ready though. The tall sleek sailor stands on the small deck of the racing pod and raises something in her hand. A flash of light rips into the funnel cloud and the tornado evaporates into blackness with a pop. Badius then turns towards the Jamaicensis. Anger flashes across her face and she points the orb toward the ship.
“No Badius, don’t do it. It does not have to happen like this” The Capt whispers.
A sharp gun report sounds sharply above the winds from the direction of the Crow’s nest. Impossibly, amidst the swirling winds and crazy motions of the vessels, Blister has found her mark.
SFX “Shlliffft!” A bullet rips through Badius’ wrist and her hand holding the white orb is blasted open. The bright orb flies out of her hand and quickly falls away from her pod into the swirling clouds below.
Badius screams in rage and looks over the railing of the small pod.
A shadow darts through the clouds. It is Voa! She snatches the falling orb from the sky and banks back towards the Jamaicensis. “Good girl!” Redtail cheers.
Without the orb, the lux portal Badius has made flashes black and expands. There is no one to control this singularity. The pod with Badius disappears into the black void as does the enemy ship. The pull of the clouds and ship becomes intense.
The Capt is focused entirely on Voa soaring through the roaring winds. He raises his arm for her to have an easier landing since one claw now holds the orb. As she extends her wings to fill them with air and slow her down, when suddenly another gunshot rings out.
“Whissss” a bullet rips past the Capt’s ear.
With a small explosion of feathers, Voa’s wing is blasted by the bullet and folds instantly. She falls out of the sky and disappears out of sight just beyond the deck railing, disappearing into the black of the portal storm.
In utter shock, Redtail whips his head back towards the location of the shot. Nissus, his long-time partner is standing on the port railing aiming a rifle at him.
“You too?” the Capt asks in disbelief.
“Sorry Capt.” With a mock curtsy, Nissus nods briefly at Redtail, her finger tapping her temple in a final salute. There is deep anger but also a trace of sorrow in her eyes. Then in the next instant she disappears backwards over the railing and falls into the portal storm.
There is no other sound remaining but the howling wind of the storm and the howling ringing in Redtail’s ears.
The Capt turns once again to Cinn. They share a non verbal conversation through their eyes that ends with no additional understanding of this morning’s events. The lux portal groans with hungry blackness. There will be no closing this one. Without the orb to control it, it will rage as a new point of contracting balance to the expanding universe.
The captain feels the familiar and infinite blackness of the void. It reaches into his mind crushing out the light. Capt Redtail has spent his whole life, pushing back that blackness, defending the infinite point of light, the infinite singularity, the infinite soul of the universe.
With final sigh of pain, Capt feels that his burden has now passed to another. As the void engulfs him he sees her. It is a young girl sleeping. A young girl caught deeply in the void herself. A young person who has no idea the life she will lead and the pain that she will suffer to defend the light. He prays for her. He cries for her. He loves her. These are his final thoughts as the portal void once and for all claims him.
“Wake up,” he tells her from the blackness.
Chapter Two - The New Void
In the pre-dawn darkness Alsi Minder jolts upright in her bed.
Being the first day of summer break, she was hoping to sleep in much longer. Her nightmare, however, seems to have other plans.
Alsi is drenched in cold sweat from the recurring nightmare. The familiar dream is still very present in her mind. The terror of it still gripping her body. The nightmare is not really scary. Not in a “horror movie” sort of way. There is no monster or bogeyman in her dream.
The terror of the dream comes from the feeling of not understanding it. There is nothing real in the dream. There is actually nothing in the dream. The dream is the feeling of not existing at all. In the dream Alsi feels the weight of the entire universe being crushed into a point in her mind that is so small she cannot comprehend it. She doesn't exist in the dream, but she is also everywhere. She feels trapped in a void between all and nothing. It gives her a horror so deeply palpable she can tangibly feel it congealing in her body. It paralyzes her.
She looks around her room trying to anchor her mind back into reality. It is dark. Way before dawn. Shaking the paralysis from her body, she climbs out of bed and opens her window to let in the cool, dry breeze of the foothills around her home. She scans the dark rolling foothills illuminated in the pale light of a waning gibbous moon. She blinks long trying to shake the foreboding sense of her nightmare.
Alsi rubs her finger and thumb together in a way she has adapted to sooth the horror of the dream. As she rubs her fingers together she can focus on both the solidity of her fingers, as well as the infinite thinness of the empty void between them. By rubbing her fingers together she can feel both opposing realities and she can focus them. It is almost as if she can aim them. She feels she can point her fingers at any place in the universe and with a snap, be there.
She snaps her fingers. “Wake up,” she says to herself.
With a sudden crack, a line of fierce thunderclouds boils across the pre dawn sky darkening the moon. Alsi peers upward in awe as line of lightning suddenly cracks and webs across the sky.
“Wow, that storm is really close” she says, the boom of thunder rattling her art pictures and many debate trophies.
Clouds boil into the sky where just a moment before there had been only stars. As lightning flashes in the dark clouds above her, she swears she can see the dark shape of a pirate ship. She shakes her head mouth still agape.
“That is silly, Alsi,” she says out loud to herself. “You think you are suddenly Wendy Darling and Peter Pan is coming to take you away to Neverland?” She smiles at her own sardonic humor.
With another bright flash in the clouds, Alsi spots something swirling downward from the sky. It is hard to track in the darkness but it looks like a large bird. It is not flying. It is falling. With a thud a large red-tailed hawk drops broken onto the backyard patio.
“Noooo!!!” She exclaims. She looks around wildly expecting that someone else must have surely witnessed these strange events. But only her eyes are attuned to the scene. She grabs her jacket and runs down the stairs to the patio door.
Without thinking she rushes out into the howling winds. The winds feel strange. Almost as if they are trying to pull her apart with a deep atomic strain. It feels like her dream. She shakes off the feeling with a shudder and turns to the patio.
The bird is flapping wildly trying to fly, but clearly it is too injured. Alsi somehow knows it is a female bird. One wing flaps as the other looks severely twisted and broken. There is blood everywhere. The bird is terrified and looking at Alsi with utter fear.
“Ohhh. You poor thing” Alsi coos. “Don’t worry. I have got you.”
She takes her jacket and approaches slowly. She does not know much about birds, but she intuitively feels that bird will not calm down until its eyes are covered. She moves carefully and deliberately. She looks the bird straight in the eys. She continues speaking in calm tones to the frightened bird. With her mind still in the scary void of her nightmare, she suddenly hears a voice there. It is faint but real. It is the bird.
The voice says, “please help me.”
Alsi closes her eyes and speaks back into the void, “I am trying. Please be still.”
The wild flapping stops and the bird hops backward from her on one leg. The other foot is curled under and clutching something.
“It’s okay, it’s okay” Alsi repeats softly both aloud and into the void of her mind. “What is your name?”
“I am Voa.”
“Hi Voa. I am Alsi.”
Overhead, the lightning storm has blown itself out and the dark clouds release a patter of raindrops that begin to dampen everything.
Alsi gets close enough to toss her wet jacket over the shaking bird. It squawks in fear, but is too hurt to move or fight. Alsi scoops up the large bird, watching carefully to stay away from the razor sharp talons.
As she gently hugs the bird in her arms, she sees a white light flash of light within the clutched claw. The light gives her heart a sudden surge of warm heat. The fear of her dream vanishes. She is safe. She is safe with this bird. She knows it.
“I’ve got you,” she says to the bird.
Then she pauses unsure of what to do next. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” She mutters.
She realizes that she has no clue how to help this poor bird.
“Get help” Voa says in her thoughts.
Help. Who can possibly help? As her mid clears she realizes that she does know someone who could help. Her friend Sam. Sam works weekends and summers at the World Center for Birds of Prey. He will know how to help this injured bird.
Alsi grabs her mobile and dials him. It is still impossibly early in pre dawn but what else can she do? “Come on Sam,” She urges. “Wake up.”
A groggy voice finally comes onto her mobile. “Hello….Alsi, is that you?”
“Yes it’s me Sam.”
There a shuffle of sound from Sam as he wakes. He says with a bit of annoyance, “You are aware that summer break starts today? It is waaay way too early for me.”
“Sam listen,” Alsi pleads with intensity in her voice. “I really need your help. I found an injured bird. I think it is a red-tailed hawk. It is really hurt. I need you.”
“What?” Sam exclaims fully awake now. “Where, how, when…?”
“Just get over here. NOW!!!”
“Okay, Okay. Yes. Yes. I am on my way!”
Captain Redtail wakes with a sudden start. Despite his screaming headache, his senses are suddenly alert. Something has jolted the ship violently.
Capt Redtail knows this power well. This is not a blast. This is not an attack. This type of wrenching pull only comes from one source, the void of a lux portal.
A lux portal, an event horizon, a black hole. Whatever you call it, it is a power that very few in the universe truly understand.
Capt Redtail is one of those. He knows well the feeling of the power released when the flow of the infinite expanse of the universe is suddenly reversed. He knows the power of dark matter and how it sucks in all light and all time until it creates a point of singularity in direct opposition to expanse. The Capt knows the sickening feeling of all natural expansion suddenly halting, reversing, and condensing inward and downward to a point so eternally and infinitesimally small that it does not even exist.
The Capt knows exactly how it feels when all expansion and all contraction occur simultaneously. The resulting effect is a tear in the very fabric of light and time that binds the universe to the laws of physics. The result is a worm hole. A portal through the forces of reality to any place in the expanse. To all places in the expanse. To no place. To all existence and to no existence.
Without a tool to direct the void and a compass to navigate such a singularity, the void grows exponentially. It consumes matter. It consumes light. It consumes time. Such uncontrolled occurrences can swallow planets, stars, and even entire galaxies. These super black holes all started with an unattended event portal.
Capt Redtail has both the tool and the compass. As an anointed lux bearer, the Capt possesses the rare Hyperlux Orb. The lux orb is a simple yet powerful conduit that allows one to aim and to focus a singularity with purpose in order to traverse across the universe. To travel through space and time. The navigation tool is encoded in his mind. Thousands of nightmares about the void have taught him the only way through the juxtaposition of endless expanse and infinite contraction.
What woke the Capt is the violent shock wave that is generated from the opening of a new lux portal into the very flow of light and time. But he did not open this one. That is what terrifies him.
The Capt jumps out of his bunk and kneels at the ancient treasure chest positioned at the very center of his quarters. The chest is where he keeps the hyperlux orb. His most precious treasure. He palms the lock and scans his retina.
The chest is empty. The orb is gone.
His heart jolts violently with a sick feeling of fear and betrayal. He knows at a cognitive level this is the moment he has been desperately seeking all his life, but now the moment is here, he is not emotionally prepared to lose his treasure. To lose his power.
He scans his mind quickly to feel the bond with the orb. It is gone. Truly gone. The orb is truly absent from his mind. He feels a panic and a peace at the same time.
Capt Redtail leaps to the door of his quarters and rushes out on deck. The bright red giant star rising just over the deck blasts his overly sensitive eyes and makes his hungover head throb even more. He shakes it off and steadies himself against the shrieking solar winds.
With a squawk and screech, Voa swoops down from the solar sail to perch upon his shoulder. The Red-tailed hawk leans in close to his ear, the tangles from his loose red pony tail flapping around her in the solar wind.
She shifts her gaze back towards the sails and the Capt follows it. The moment he sees it, his eyes grow wide confirming his worst fear. The portal horizon looms over the ship sucking in light and matter into its black core. The solar wind condensing matter creates clouds of nebulae that form a disc around the black worm hole of the new singularity.
The sudden storm from the event horizon hits the sails with invisible violence and the ship rocks with the force. The pull of the worm hole is powerful. It will consume the ship in no time. Without the hyperlux orb to control the passage through time and space, the Jamaicensis could end up anywhere in the universe. Or it could end up nowhere just as easily. The difference between everything and nothing becoming equal inside the singularity.
“Beat to quarters!” Capt Redtail yells. A second later drums sound harshly across the deck. The crew appears in instant action and a controlled chaos. The solar sails begin to open, the artificial atmosphere around the ship expands opening a battlefield.
Anathra Cinn appears at his side. The dark windjammer is gripping a round black orb. Capt looks her in the eye with a grim sternness as he points to his empty palm then points to the open lux portal above the ship.
With a flash of surprise and then a nod of instant understanding, “Not from you?” She confirms.
Capt grimaces and shakes his head. “Can you raise the matter storm?“
Cinn closes her eyes and raises her stone. A clash of thunder rattles the ship as dark storm clouds begin to boil outward around the ship. These clouds of matter begin to feed the portal and satisfy its appetite for atoms. This stabilizes the pull of the ship from being sucked into the portal.
Voa, the elegant red-tailed hawk on the shoulder of the capt opens her broad wings and releases her clutch as she is swept gracefully upward into the expanding sky using the rush of wind that rolls across the deck and snaps the sails full.
Capt Redtail barks an order to his trusted first mate, Shikra Badius.
“Badius, I need you on the Bridge!” Then after a long pause he says more quietly, “Badius, don’t do this. Not you.” There is no response.
He shifts his gaze to the helm. Helmsman Nika Melierax is at there, her strong, sure hands ready on the deck wheel. “Nika,” Capt says calmly and firmly, pointing overhead toward the open portal above, “Bring us around so the starboard battery is facing that portal.
Nika nods affirmation of the order and the Jamaicensis leans as she bends into the swirling wall of the suddenly forming hurricane that surrounds the ship and the lux portal..
The voice of Blister Goshawk, sounds in his hear, “Capt, there is a ship emerging from the portal!”
“Shit! Brace for ion impact!!” Redtail yells. “Magni, shields up!!!”
An array of booms sound from the ship emerging from the newly formed lux portal. Streaks of ionized plasma trails stream outward from the portal towards the Jamaicensis. In the same instant, Magni Rostriss, second mate makes a lightning fast motion on the controls and lighting erupts from the solar masts streaking protectively around the ship. As the lighting and plasma connect, explosions rock across the deck from stern to port as the cannon balls blast upon impact. The ships shudders from the blasts, parts of it going dark from ion damage.
Redtail shouts, “Magni, Drop shields!” Then says, “Uni, Sing, fire Starboard array!”
The lightning winks away with a blast of thunder followed by more controlled series of booms and plasma clouds that fire in a coordinated fashion down along the hull of the ship. Ion balls rip outward from the ship and into the enemy ship. Explosions rip outward from the portal as the attack bursts into explosions upon the enemy ship inside.
“Blister,” Redtail says firmly, “keep a sharp eye for one of our escape pods heading towards the portal.”
Blister asks again seeming to confirm she had heard correctly, “Capt, you did not open that portal?”
“No. It was Badius... She’s stolen the Hyperlux Orb.”
Blister shouts, “Well fuck me. Wait, I see her. There is a pod. It’s there off the port at ten o’clock.”
“Good eyes, Blister! If you get a bead on her, fire!”
“Fire on…on Badius?” She questions with incredulity.
Redtail closes his eye and shakes his head sadly. “Confirmed. Destroy that Pod.”
More booms from the second pirate ship announce a second volley of incoming plasma fire. But Magni is ready this time. At the shield controls, she clenches her fist upon the controller in her hand and makes a stabbing motion towards the income cannon flares of the live cannonballs.
With a blinding light the sails erupt with lightning once again. It spiders in a flash outward protectively around the ship and the balls explode across the lightning net with violent blasts.
Anathra Cinn stands on deck clenching her black orb. She moves her hand into a swirling gesture and a tornado drops from the wall of clouds and spindles outwards towards the small pod.
On board the pod, Badius is ready though. The tall sleek sailor stands on the small deck of the racing pod and raises something in her hand. A flash of light rips into the funnel cloud and the tornado evaporates into blackness with a pop. Badius then turns towards the Jamaicensis. Anger flashes across her face and she points the orb toward the ship.
“No Badius, don’t do it. It does not have to happen like this” The Capt whispers.
A sharp gun report sounds sharply above the winds from the direction of the Crow’s nest. Impossibly, amidst the swirling winds and crazy motions of the vessels, Blister has found her mark.
SFX “Shlliffft!” A bullet rips through Badius’ wrist and her hand holding the white orb is blasted open. The bright orb flies out of her hand and quickly falls away from her pod into the swirling clouds below.
Badius screams in rage and looks over the railing of the small pod.
A shadow darts through the clouds. It is Voa! She snatches the falling orb from the sky and banks back towards the Jamaicensis. “Good girl!” Redtail cheers.
Without the orb, the lux portal Badius has made flashes black and expands. There is no one to control this singularity. The pod with Badius disappears into the black void as does the enemy ship. The pull of the clouds and ship becomes intense.
The Capt is focused entirely on Voa soaring through the roaring winds. He raises his arm for her to have an easier landing since one claw now holds the orb. As she extends her wings to fill them with air and slow her down, when suddenly another gunshot rings out.
“Whissss” a bullet rips past the Capt’s ear.
With a small explosion of feathers, Voa’s wing is blasted by the bullet and folds instantly. She falls out of the sky and disappears out of sight just beyond the deck railing, disappearing into the black of the portal storm.
In utter shock, Redtail whips his head back towards the location of the shot. Nissus, his long-time partner is standing on the port railing aiming a rifle at him.
“You too?” the Capt asks in disbelief.
“Sorry Capt.” With a mock curtsy, Nissus nods briefly at Redtail, her finger tapping her temple in a final salute. There is deep anger but also a trace of sorrow in her eyes. Then in the next instant she disappears backwards over the railing and falls into the portal storm.
There is no other sound remaining but the howling wind of the storm and the howling ringing in Redtail’s ears.
The Capt turns once again to Cinn. They share a non verbal conversation through their eyes that ends with no additional understanding of this morning’s events. The lux portal groans with hungry blackness. There will be no closing this one. Without the orb to control it, it will rage as a new point of contracting balance to the expanding universe.
The captain feels the familiar and infinite blackness of the void. It reaches into his mind crushing out the light. Capt Redtail has spent his whole life, pushing back that blackness, defending the infinite point of light, the infinite singularity, the infinite soul of the universe.
With final sigh of pain, Capt feels that his burden has now passed to another. As the void engulfs him he sees her. It is a young girl sleeping. A young girl caught deeply in the void herself. A young person who has no idea the life she will lead and the pain that she will suffer to defend the light. He prays for her. He cries for her. He loves her. These are his final thoughts as the portal void once and for all claims him.
“Wake up,” he tells her from the blackness.
Chapter Two - The New Void
In the pre-dawn darkness Alsi Minder jolts upright in her bed.
Being the first day of summer break, she was hoping to sleep in much longer. Her nightmare, however, seems to have other plans.
Alsi is drenched in cold sweat from the recurring nightmare. The familiar dream is still very present in her mind. The terror of it still gripping her body. The nightmare is not really scary. Not in a “horror movie” sort of way. There is no monster or bogeyman in her dream.
The terror of the dream comes from the feeling of not understanding it. There is nothing real in the dream. There is actually nothing in the dream. The dream is the feeling of not existing at all. In the dream Alsi feels the weight of the entire universe being crushed into a point in her mind that is so small she cannot comprehend it. She doesn't exist in the dream, but she is also everywhere. She feels trapped in a void between all and nothing. It gives her a horror so deeply palpable she can tangibly feel it congealing in her body. It paralyzes her.
She looks around her room trying to anchor her mind back into reality. It is dark. Way before dawn. Shaking the paralysis from her body, she climbs out of bed and opens her window to let in the cool, dry breeze of the foothills around her home. She scans the dark rolling foothills illuminated in the pale light of a waning gibbous moon. She blinks long trying to shake the foreboding sense of her nightmare.
Alsi rubs her finger and thumb together in a way she has adapted to sooth the horror of the dream. As she rubs her fingers together she can focus on both the solidity of her fingers, as well as the infinite thinness of the empty void between them. By rubbing her fingers together she can feel both opposing realities and she can focus them. It is almost as if she can aim them. She feels she can point her fingers at any place in the universe and with a snap, be there.
She snaps her fingers. “Wake up,” she says to herself.
With a sudden crack, a line of fierce thunderclouds boils across the pre dawn sky darkening the moon. Alsi peers upward in awe as line of lightning suddenly cracks and webs across the sky.
“Wow, that storm is really close” she says, the boom of thunder rattling her art pictures and many debate trophies.
Clouds boil into the sky where just a moment before there had been only stars. As lightning flashes in the dark clouds above her, she swears she can see the dark shape of a pirate ship. She shakes her head mouth still agape.
“That is silly, Alsi,” she says out loud to herself. “You think you are suddenly Wendy Darling and Peter Pan is coming to take you away to Neverland?” She smiles at her own sardonic humor.
With another bright flash in the clouds, Alsi spots something swirling downward from the sky. It is hard to track in the darkness but it looks like a large bird. It is not flying. It is falling. With a thud a large red-tailed hawk drops broken onto the backyard patio.
“Noooo!!!” She exclaims. She looks around wildly expecting that someone else must have surely witnessed these strange events. But only her eyes are attuned to the scene. She grabs her jacket and runs down the stairs to the patio door.
Without thinking she rushes out into the howling winds. The winds feel strange. Almost as if they are trying to pull her apart with a deep atomic strain. It feels like her dream. She shakes off the feeling with a shudder and turns to the patio.
The bird is flapping wildly trying to fly, but clearly it is too injured. Alsi somehow knows it is a female bird. One wing flaps as the other looks severely twisted and broken. There is blood everywhere. The bird is terrified and looking at Alsi with utter fear.
“Ohhh. You poor thing” Alsi coos. “Don’t worry. I have got you.”
She takes her jacket and approaches slowly. She does not know much about birds, but she intuitively feels that bird will not calm down until its eyes are covered. She moves carefully and deliberately. She looks the bird straight in the eys. She continues speaking in calm tones to the frightened bird. With her mind still in the scary void of her nightmare, she suddenly hears a voice there. It is faint but real. It is the bird.
The voice says, “please help me.”
Alsi closes her eyes and speaks back into the void, “I am trying. Please be still.”
The wild flapping stops and the bird hops backward from her on one leg. The other foot is curled under and clutching something.
“It’s okay, it’s okay” Alsi repeats softly both aloud and into the void of her mind. “What is your name?”
“I am Voa.”
“Hi Voa. I am Alsi.”
Overhead, the lightning storm has blown itself out and the dark clouds release a patter of raindrops that begin to dampen everything.
Alsi gets close enough to toss her wet jacket over the shaking bird. It squawks in fear, but is too hurt to move or fight. Alsi scoops up the large bird, watching carefully to stay away from the razor sharp talons.
As she gently hugs the bird in her arms, she sees a white light flash of light within the clutched claw. The light gives her heart a sudden surge of warm heat. The fear of her dream vanishes. She is safe. She is safe with this bird. She knows it.
“I’ve got you,” she says to the bird.
Then she pauses unsure of what to do next. “What the hell am I supposed to do now?” She mutters.
She realizes that she has no clue how to help this poor bird.
“Get help” Voa says in her thoughts.
Help. Who can possibly help? As her mid clears she realizes that she does know someone who could help. Her friend Sam. Sam works weekends and summers at the World Center for Birds of Prey. He will know how to help this injured bird.
Alsi grabs her mobile and dials him. It is still impossibly early in pre dawn but what else can she do? “Come on Sam,” She urges. “Wake up.”
A groggy voice finally comes onto her mobile. “Hello….Alsi, is that you?”
“Yes it’s me Sam.”
There a shuffle of sound from Sam as he wakes. He says with a bit of annoyance, “You are aware that summer break starts today? It is waaay way too early for me.”
“Sam listen,” Alsi pleads with intensity in her voice. “I really need your help. I found an injured bird. I think it is a red-tailed hawk. It is really hurt. I need you.”
“What?” Sam exclaims fully awake now. “Where, how, when…?”
“Just get over here. NOW!!!”
“Okay, Okay. Yes. Yes. I am on my way!”