(Chapter 1)
Sleep used to run off of her body like beads of water after a shower. But these days it was hard as matted hair to shake, and it clung to her skin like mud, cooling her and slowing her every uncomfortable move out of bed.
She would wake up, eat breakfast, check her usual briefings, and pursue her humdrum assignments with the enthusiasm of a stone. Dinner was usually meager, if it was at all. She had lost a considerable weight over the past few months, and her frighteningly muscular form had softened dramatically. Her once fiery face was the epitome of blankness, her once graceful movements stalwart and weighed down by her paradoxically empty and heavy heart. Her work was not what she considered real work anymore; it was an excuse to be considered useful by her higher-ups, and to earn enough keep to live as a rank-and-file military officer. Life was but a dreary reflecting pool of itself.
It will not be like this forever, Samus told herself. She knew it would not. Had the Chozo anticipated this for her they would have sent her back to live with her own race instead of adopting her when she was orphaned so long ago, and raising her as one of their own warriors. It seems that when they had made their decision to adopt and raise her as they had, that they had done so on the basis of examining her entire life: Each one of her future missions, her eventual existential crises and her coming to terms with who she was and was not, and her eventual meeting and losing of the one human who she felt truly understood her all had been foretold and decided upon by her feathered Fates. She recalled the day when she had learned that the Chozo had intended for her to not only meet Adam Malkovich, but for her to receive from him what was essentially the necessary human component of her life education. At the time it had not surprised her. The painful nature of learning to be human contrasted with the fantastic character of Adam throughout the ordeal made the whole thing feel like something that only the Chozo could have set up for her. Now she did not know whether to thank or curse the Chozo for sending her knowingly down this path.
Thinking of Adam, she couldn't help but feel in the pit of her stomach that he would be deeply disappointed if he saw her in her current state. Not to mention the crew she had served with under him. She felt like she was letting them all down, they who also had helped her to understand herself. She had not spoken with a single one of them since their fateful mission together, and she dreaded the day when she would meet some of them somewhere and catch up with them.
'So what have you been up to?' They would ask her.
Protocol inspections, quarantine enforcement, playing look-out. Unimportant, pathetic, small-time work. She hoped she would get her act together before she met up with any of them, or with anyone she deemed significant. But, that would have to wait for the day when sleep did not cling to her. That would have to wait for the day when she found whatever she needed to find to insert some kind of workable meaning into her life. And, today was not that day – not yet at least, she thought recalling her assignment.
Today's mission: Seek out and investigate the source of a strange gravity wave pattern around another G star, the official spectral-class destination of any Federation mission it seemed, aside from the occasional K star. The repetition was not entirely purposeful, it was jut that most spacecrafts of the day, even Chozo spacecrafts, were not suitable to approach anything beyond a G star. Strong enough stellar winds could rip apart the engines of her ship. She had been surprised that the interstellar Chozo transporters did not do the same sometimes, before she figured out that the turbulence of the transporters was mostly a subjective phenomenon.
She had flown through a total of five of the transporters to get to a base on the outskirts of the star system she was supposed to investigate, each one producing the dizzying out-of-body rush that accompanied both higher-dimensional travel and the use of certain Chozo technologies. The Chozo transporters spanned a great area of the galaxy, and most of their more remote destinations had not been probed by human spacecraft. Samus assumed that the Chozo had some business in this particular system at one time, but had eventually abandoned it in the same way they had abandoned most of their outposts long ago, leaving behind characteristically obscure ruins and a transport gate. The galactic history of the Chozo was at least a couple millennia long, and Samus had only been educated in the recent century of their still vast doings. Her relatively minimal education was still enough for the human Federation Corps to designate her as the point-woman for investigating phenomena like these.
From her ship's gravitation readings, she had concluded that the source of the gravity waves was probably among the inner terrestrial planets. While a source of gravity waves would have, to humans, once been indicative of large stellar events, detection of strange gravity waves using man-made technology could now indicate a technology gone haywire on a single small planet. Gravity wave detection technology was important to the Federation and had advanced greatly in the last century. Samus was just thankful that it had provided her some avenue of employment for the time being.
As she approached the inner planets of the star system, several of her ship's sensors started to indicate strange and nonsensical readings. This caused her to become somewhat alert for the first time in days. She made a note to herself that she would soon have to decide whether to investigate or leave citing unreliable conditions and asking the military to send a larger and better equipped force to investigate this anomaly. But the fact that she had never seen readings like these before, as well as her awakened curiosity, pushed her onward into the unknown for now. Interestingly, for the first time since she had met Adam and had realized that she was sailing in frightening and uncharted waters under his command, she felt inexorably pulled towards a potential source of tribulation.
She approached the outermost terrestrial planet, but found that her ship's sensors did not perk up any more as she drew close, so she veered off that course and accelerated further inward. She could see the crescent of the next planet from where she was, and she aimed her ship directly at it, firing the thrusters as though she were in a terrible rush to get there.
As she drew closer and closer, she noticed her ship's sensor readings began to maddeningly dance and flash colorful warnings at her. She knew that anyone else seeing such readings would turn away immediately. But the lights and sounds almost seemed like beacons to her, and the dancing bars and needles seemed to be a welcoming dance, as though somebody was celebrating her return home.
Her visual display screen still looked normal despite the apparent chaos going on all around her. She watched the horizon of the planet grow larger and larger, and finally as she could make out the contrast of land and water. She then noticed a large black cloud beginning to engulf the otherwise normal view of the planet. Samus could almost swear she saw it moving, shifting, morphing, and all at a rate far too great for any kind of cloud being observed at her distance. Did this thing have a life of its own? And was it the source of the unseen chaos that now surrounded her?
Suddenly she felt as though she had been drawn into a game of chicken with this thing, and as she decisively began a headlong rush into its path she began to really question her own state of mind. Was she being controlled by something? Was something pulling her towards this potential danger? She had no sound reason to be doing any of this. In fact everything except her mysterious fascination told her to get the hell out; to turn back now, and to escape while she still could.
But, she had to stay the course, just a little longer to feed her now desperate curiosity. She stood at a constant 70 degree bend on the cockpit floor, her eyes fixated on her visual display. Alarms and warnings rang out around her. All sensor readings were in the critical zone, even though that seemed impossible to her. Temperature – Critical? Pressure – Critical? Electro-magnetic interference – Critical? From the readings it seemed like her ship was trying to tell her that she was approaching the core of the sun. But instead of blinding light ahead of her, she saw only the looming, shifting, ominous cloud. This devious cloud. It almost seemed to be reaching out for her now. The planet's horizon approached along with it, and now comprised her entire field of electronic vision.
Somehow, she suddenly came to something resembling her senses and realized that she could not just fly into this thing without understanding more about it, not with the sensor readings she was getting. Angry and disappointed that she had come all this way and had gotten so worked up over what would, in the end, be just another blip on her personal radar, she prepared to turn her ship around before disaster was in range of striking. She was half hoping that she hadn't be too late in making this decision when from the center of the black cloud erupted a brilliant, and what would have been a blinding blue light had Samus not been observing this event on an electronic viewing screen. She still instinctively brought her hand to her eyes to shield herself, expecting the explosion to rip through the screen and blow her apart. However, the opposite of her expectations occurred when the once raucous and frenetic sensor systems suddenly fell silent and dark. She lowered her shielding hand and quickly reassessed her situation.
She was now approaching what looked like a blue-filtered Chozo interstellar transport tunnel. Her ship's sensors were suddenly withing normal ranges. No more warnings urged her to turn around. Her emotions were also eerily silent and calm. The once frightening thing before her now looked like a brilliant blue ocean that beckoned her to jump in for a swim. She almost wished the looming cloud was still there, because it seemed a little more honest in its intentions. Samus did not know that she could trust this serene blue rift in space-time. But, everything else seemed to indicate that she could, at least to some extent.
Admitting her own desire to trust the space-time rift, she sighed. There was no use fighting it; no use fighting herself. She recalled from her time and education in Adam's company that fighting herself, no matter what part of herself, was a losing battle. Something beckoned her onward, and at a point in her life when she felt she had nothing to lose she could not help but listen and be moved. She slowly reached out to a touch-screen panel, and ran her fingers up a virtual gage indicating that she intended to fire the ship's thrusters. The ship hummed with a soothing rising pitch, and accelerated forward into the deep blue.
Samus, putting her faith in the powers that be, submerged into the ocean. She half-heartedly apologized to the Federation in her mind for taking what she feared could end up being a very long detour. Her ship moved steadily forward, and after a while the dark cloud began to close behind her. The brilliant blue light engulfed her.
Across a frozen landscape a masked wanderer tread slowly in deep thought. A slow silent stream of consciousness poured out of him and onto the virgin snow around him. He was surprised that the snow did not melt, recalling times in the past when his emotions had caused a noticeable change in the physical world around him. He pulled his cloak tighter, wondering for a moment if he had been sound in deciding to come back to this bleak cold world.
He quickly pushed that uncertainty aside, remembering that he hadn't had much of a choice in his destination when he had decided to come here. His decision had been based on his need to travel through time freely so that he might someday find who he was looking for. He knew that in this world there were the alchemical necessities for him to attempt to create a time portal, though they would be excruciatingly difficult to access under the vast ocean. To his chagrin now he had been hesitant to experiment with underwater breathing in the past, though he knew that such a feat would not be out of the question if his search depended on it.
Aside from these relatively small assessments of his current situation, most of his thoughts since his arrival here had consisted of slow meanderings over the recent events that had brought him to this point. He meditated on the possibility that he might not be standing where he was, contemplating what would be his final goal without help from those others – help that he would have thrown away in a heartbeat for one final act of vengeance on the seaside cliffs. He would have wiped them out had they chosen to share his murderous mentality in that moment, but they had refused and left him to seek what they felt to be a greater good. After the initial letdown (and what he reluctantly deemed a blow to his ego), he recalled feeling a premonition of change (brought on by realizing that his inner monster was growing stale and tired, and was quickly becoming of little use to what was left of him). He had (not without initial reservation) decided to join them and had exacted his vengeance on his true lifelong nemesis in what seemed, in retrospect, to have been the only way possible.
All the while he had watched them, particularly the children of the millennium. Unknown to them he had been taking mental notes and filing them under the heading “normal people”. What they did in their spare time would have once been something that he neither needed nor wanted to have anything to do with. But, as his many pasts had crumbled (literally and metaphorically) before him, he had come punctually to the conclusion that rebuilding those nightmares was a losing prospect. So he instead became the silent observer of these true “others”; a kind of blank slate with a darkened soul hoping to learn something relevant to what he deemed his new beginning. He watched them go about their daily lives, and allowed the storm of confusions and conclusions this strange picture show produced play itself out in his mind. He had kept up his guard and had kept his priorities front-and-center, but over time he had found a growing acceptance for the possibilities that existed within himself. Had he been born in another place or time he could have been anybody. He could have been just like them.
These thoughts and feelings were fresh in his consciousness as he had silently departed their company only a short while ago. Despite his dedicated watchfulness and the gradual shift of his feelings, he had been an shadowy enigma to the end in their presence. Though inside he felt a considerable amount of gratitude towards them for their help, he expected that they probably understood this and had chosen not to confuse their parting with words. He had humbly made his exit through the time portal, bound for an old and familiar, if not slightly loathed, landscape.
He had expected a familiar bitterness to present itself on the other side of the portal, but was pleased to find that he did not feel slighted in the least by his location when he arrived. This was because something wonderful and unexpected had happened to him during his trip through the fourth dimension. The weight of old memories had lifted from him as he sailed on the winds of time, and he had realized that he was flying away from anyone who had any idea of his darkened misdeeds, away from old grudges and spite. Not only that, he was flying away from the possibility of that darkness having to repeat itself, to a place where he may never have to act out of forced spite on a wicked path. It was as though real chains were being removed from him; chains which had physically restrained him and hurt him, which he had secretly cursed for so long. When his feet touched down softly upon this snowy landscape he breathed a refreshing first breath unhindered by hatred, expectation, revenge, or any emotion that had characterized his past, save one. He was now forever free to seek his cathartic relief for that one.
Because of these new blessings, he realized he could live with the cold landscape on which he trod. He could live with the pains of everyday life, with the frustrating circles of the rest of his Samsaric existence. He could live with the monumental challenges that he knew he would have to face on his own. He could live, and by the Fates he could die with them if it came to that. For the first time in his life he felt an inner peace that could only accompany something which very closely resembled an existence unbound.
He suddenly smiled to himself as he caught his mind getting carried away in this ridiculous fashion. Too much of this and he would get into a different but just as dangerous kind of trouble. He had to stop and remind himself of who he really was. He reminded himself that he still had a cathartic need which would persist, and with that need came a clearly defined goal, and with that goal came a not-so-clearly defined path. Still, he had a working plan. For now it was one foot in front of the other across the snowy plain until he would reach the ocean where his sunken home rested, and with it the precious Dreamstone which he sought. He would have to live on the shore while he taught himself to be a fish, or a whale, in order to reach his alchemical necessity. (Ah, shapeshifting – there was an idea.) Assuming that he could eventually make a time portal, he would then journey to the far future to study any and all archives of strange archaeological findings, historical happenings, or any other fields which might provide clues to some past event that indicated the presence of his sister's sudden appearance to an unsuspecting world. What could it be? A small and little-known magic revival? Perhaps a traveling priestess appeared and miraculously healed the sick for a while. Maybe he would find evidence of a witch hunt at one point, something that would have scared him had he not had faith that Schala would have been completely capable of escaping and unwilling to offer herself up as a martyr.
He went on in his mind through different possibilities, including the possibility that he may not be able to make a time portal at all and would have to set up a hermitage. He imagined other possible shortcomings to his plans, too. Trying to take them all in fair consideration, not dwelling too long on any one, he concentrated on planning and walking, until his concentration was all at once broken by something. He had no idea what, though. Sometimes he would feel premonitions of a perturbation in one of his senses long before he saw, smelled, heard, felt, or tasted anything that required his attention. Even premonitions of premonitions disturbed him from time to time.
He felt strongly compelled to look at the sky, and so quickly directed his attention that way. What he saw ignited a slew of racing thoughts. First, it had not been on his list of possibilities, and thus presented a potentially troublesome hurdle in his path. Second, events of this nature brought on entirely different premonitions; ones that lingered and chilled him in ways that he had hoped long gone. Third, what he was witnessing could be of some help to him, although he had no idea how at the present moment.
A bright object was streaking across the sky in broad daylight, and it was only growing brighter. From his vantage point, it looked as though it could possibly crash into the cliffs where he was headed. How peculiar. It was as though this object from the sky was somehow intended for him. He felt a strong urge to rush there and intercept it, so he hoisted his cloak in front of him, lifted his feet from the ground, and sped forward across the plain, hovering at a mad dash pace.
The suspicions that this new falling star was something malicious came and went quickly, leaving him with the hunch that it was a boon of some kind. But, he wondered, what could it possibly be?
Wonderful. From every sensor on the fritz to one, Samus thought. Too bad this time it was one sensor that was getting correct readings, and they spelled disaster for her.
Her ship's emergence from the blue rift had caused her engines to shut down and had left her hurdling at breakneck speed towards the surface of the once inviting looking planet. Not only was the planet less inviting because she was hurdling towards real trouble, but the landscape had drastically changed during the twenty or so seconds she had counted flying through the mysterious tunnel. Previously she was approaching a pleasantly colored world with landmasses of brown, green, and some more exotic patches of color. Now she was approaching what appeared to be a planet akin to Earth during the last ice age. She did not want to be without her ship anywhere, but she really did not want to be without her ship on planet snowball, possibly without any hope of contacting the Federation for rescue. She cringed at the thought of living out the rest of her days as a lonely high-tech Eskimo.
Thankfully the presently bleating sensor, her engine reservoir meter, had provided her with the logical solution to her harrowing problem. She just hoped that her movement in the direction of that solution had been fast enough to sufficiently slow her descent and prevent total destruction of her precious ship. Her energy reservoirs for her ship's engines had been mysteriously flushed as she had exited the rift, and as she had quickly realized this serious problem she had directed power from any less important system on board to the engine reservoirs, hoping to fill them enough in time to fire the reverse thrusters before impact. In the meantime, she ran quickly to don her power suit in case fiery impact was inevitable and she would have to eject.
She hurriedly slipped into every separate suit component on the suit's holding rack, and without preparing for the out-of-body experience that would follow, she commanded the suit to unite in its own right and with her body. Like sensational wrecking balls, bright white curtains of light closed on her from both sides, and an electrical storm coursed through her body which, of course, felt about three feet away from where she was currently situated. She woke up a couple of seconds after her subsequent loss of all consciousness and screamed a vulgar exclamation fitting of the unwelcome onslaught of sensations. But, she really had no time to dwell beyond that, and forced her now armored self onto her feet and into the cockpit once more. The planet's surface looked gut-wrenchingly close to her, but she also saw that the reservoirs were almost full. It would be a close call, but she would be able to fire the reverse thrusters in time to prevent most damage to her ship. She strapped herself into her chair and readied her fingers over the touch-screen where she would quickly ramp up the reverse thrusters and steer towards the least jagged piece of terrain she could spy.
She watched the detail of the landscape increase exponentially in front of her, but managed to keep all of her thoughts inline with finding a suitable patch of land and watching the reservoir meter. However, the possibility of landing on a patch of visible land was growing more and more unlikely in her mind. She noticed that she was coming in for crash-landing close to a jagged looking coastline, but she would likely hit shallow water and the unknown rocky structures beneath it. No matter. This was still her best bet. She would take it.
Adrenaline grew within her at the pace of the detail of the landscape. She was within five seconds of firing the (four) reverse thrusters. She found her patch of land and (three) quickly adjusted her directional vector. She would (two) grind to a halt over the rocky beach after skimming the (one) surface of the water.
Show time.
A decisive swipe of her hand over the touch screen brought the reverse thrusters online with a grandiose roar. Her accompanying directional vector hurdled the ship into a sharp thrust upright and in line with the landscape. Suddenly the flat horizon of the planet rushed frighteningly into her field of view from overhead. Her heart racing, chest aching, and her arms straining on the manual steering module, she quickly identified key features of the landscape and determined the direction she had to wrench the ship in order to hit the pebbled coast line. Oh god that water looks close, she --
CRUNCH! The shock wave of impacting the surface beneath the water sent her intestines leaping into her chest beneath the solid suit of armor. No, it's okay, she convinced herself, jaws clenched, and continued wrenching the manual steering module, sending her ship skittering out of the water and up the coastline and onto her target beach. The air friction created by the reverse thrusters and the ground friction created by the pebbled beach were enough to bring her ship to a halt rather quickly. Actually, too quickly. She could barely control her arms enough as the rapid deceleration of her vessel must have increased her weight at least tenfold, and she had to turn off those thrusters in order to not send her ship back into the water. Luckily as the effects of rapid deceleration subsided, she was able to kill them before they sent her back too far along the beach.
Slowly the ship ground to a halt on its backwards path along the beach. She sat catatonic, all her internal systems haywire, thinking that she was glad she had put on her suit before that landing. If she had not, possible irreversible internal bleeding would have done her in. A menacing pain in her abdomen slowly subsided under her power suit's care. She could still feel her heart racing faster than ever, but after a couple of minutes of panicked deep breaths she knew she would be fine. She allowed herself that luxury as she quickly planned her next course of action.
First, she would need an estimated auto repair time for her undoubtedly damaged ship. Then, she would have to assess her location – find potential food sources, search for inhabitants, oh god this is too much. I don't even know where I am anymore. Even if the ship will work in a day I have no idea if that portal will still be there, or if it will open, and if it does where would I... oh damn it all!
Samus felt like the biggest fool in the world. She'd bet it all on a desperate and emotionally charged gamble and may have come up empty-handed for it. What would Adam think, she wondered. Actually, to hell with what Adam would have thought. She could care less. She was desperate, more desperate than she had ever been in her life, and she realized that at this moment her desperation was her greatest ally. She hopped nervously to her feet, yanked her suit's helmet off of her head after deactivating it, and demanded, “Computer! I need a full systems analysis and auto-repair forecast for the ship!” She started to pace about, thinking, thinking... “I need a life form scan of the immediate area...” Thinking, pacing... Yikes! I can't forget that! “And, I need an atmospheric analysis NOW.” She hoped the computer picked up her heavy emphasis on the “now” part.
Thankfully it did, or at least it seemed like it did. Replacing her view of the beach on her electronic display was a pie chart depicting various elements in the planet's atmosphere. It indicated high levels of nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water vapor in ratios and at an atmospheric pressure that looked very familiar to Samus. It's almost exactly like Earth, she thought excitedly. No noxious gasses were detected. She also noticed that basic meteorological data had been produced along with the atmospheric analysis. Negative fifteen centigrade? That's not good. Wind chill made it at least negative 22. Thankfully, the temperature was the least of her concerns, but she was hoping for something a little more pleasant so she could enjoy some fresh air without freezing her already strained lungs.
Her ship's computer altered her display again, this time indicating that the systems damaged by the crash were minimal, and a full repair could be completed in eight hours. Samus' eyes grew wide again. “Eight hours? Are you kidding me?” She gasped joyously, and threw her arms forward as though she wanted to hug the electronic entity. “That's wonderful!” She threw up her fists and looked to the heavens with a celestial smile. “Thank you!”
She began to laugh ecstatically. Despite her very rocky “landing” , things were quickly looking up, and she hoped that they would continue in this direction. “Computer!” she commanded, “Make me one of those instant military meals. I don't care what kind. And a black tea.” The display indicated that she had run out of tea, and she laughed at the minute nature of the first bad news she had received since the crash. “Fine, hot water then!”
Next on her unfolding agenda was going out for fresh air and investigating the landscape, disregarding the temperature. Dealing with temperatures like these wouldn't be too hard. She would leave her power suit in tact below the neck, bringing a military issue thermal hat, some goggles, and a makeshift scarf (a pair of sweatpants) to the surface with her. That should do it. Her hair had also grown out quite a bit in her lackadaisical state over the past year, so that would help with the weather too.
She quickly dressed in this manner which she had deemed appropriate, and stood on the lift under the ship's main hatch, indicating to the computer that she wanted to go up and out. The hatched opened above her, and she was elevated swiftly to the roof of the ship where she stepped off the lift before the hatch closed behind her. The stinging cold air outside didn't provide the best of sensations, but she didn't feel as though she was in danger from it. She breathed through the material of the sweats which she wore over her nose and mouth like a thick bandanna, and she surveyed the beach from her high vantage point. However, she realized that she would have to move to the higher cliffs ahead of her if she wanted a better visual assessment of her surroundings. She leaped from the roof of her ship and onto the pebbles below, running quickly to the most manageable path up to the high cliff.
At the edge of the high cliff, her soaring emotions took an upsetting downturn. The landscape was bleaker than she had realized. It had been hard to properly assess it from the view screen as her ship had crashed down. She wondered if she would even have any luck finding potential game animals, and hoped that life form scan she had requested from her ship would be done upon her return, along with her meal. (She couldn't help but feel a little hungry contemplating starvation.)
She actually felt more upset at the very diminished prospect of finding any kind of civilization than the diminished prospect of finding food. The more she thought about the barren landscape the more she began to feel hopelessly alone. She turned towards the sea, and was comforted some by the pleasant view ahead. She could see the star central to this system behind some very ornate looking clouds. Clouds always reminded her of the planet on which the Chozo had raised her, and with the memory of the Chozo came the memory of something that Samus found helpful in times like these.
She stood in deep meditation and appreciation of the landscape in front of her, quieting all of her senses, her inner monologues, her hopes, fears, and any other prominent emotions. The closer she listened to the landscape, the more likely she was to receive a sound piece of advice from a rock, a tree, a cliff, a mountain, or anything really. Most humans she worked with would find the practice strange and unsettling, but she knew it had worked for her in the past. Furthermore, she knew that humans had been doing this far longer than they had been traversing the galaxy. The Chozo had actually advised her on how to do it, telling her that humans needed to keep these valuable old ways among them.
With every breath on the cliffs her whole being quieted until she was focussed almost strictly on the landscape with every sense. She waited patiently for a sign from anywhere; a voice, a vision, a memory raising smell. It would sometimes come to her quickly, but at times she had sat or stood in extreme weather for over an hour in wait before something of meaning exerted that unmistakable pull on her focus. A falling drop of rain, an insect bite, a cold gust of wind; any one could be the hint she needed. The silence now deep within her, she waited, feeling it would not be long.
Kaaaa...
A stirring of relief rose within her, and she searched the corners of her vision for the source of the bird call she knew she had heard. To the left of her, over some large ominous off-shore rocks, there he was. A large white seabird hovered on the wind. He rocked and bobbed looking down at the shore below him, and eventually he made a dive for the water. Fishing, Samus suspected, and knew now the the planet was not a barren place. But, was she the lone touch of civilization on the surface? Recalling common courses of evolution, she understood that if there were avians of this nature about, there was hope.
Distraction. He hated the feeling of distraction. And, with the advent of this new falling star that's all he was aware of. Suddenly he could not stay focussed on his intentions outside of getting to the shore as fast as possible. So, he gave up trying to focus on anything but that as he swooped over the hilly landscape like a bird of prey on course for a kill.
To alleviate the dangers of traveling in the open at great speeds in sub-freezing temperatures, he had raised his cloak over his head, still seeing the landscape clearly through an eye-shaped jewel sewn on the its underside. The jewel blinked unsettlingly, a quality he had found horrifically charming when he had won it off a bet with a demon from the Middle Ages, slightly underhandedly if memory served him correctly. While dealing with hellacious, wrathful, deep dark forces had gotten him into trouble in the past, his skills as a trickster had always proved somewhat rewarding to him. He secured this point in his working memory.
Almost there, he thought to himself as he could smell a hint of salt water on the breeze. Ahead he saw in monoscopic psychic vision a most wonderful cloudscape, with his familiar sun nestled in artistically like a rose amid a sea small field flours. The nostalgia of the view provoked a rare sweetness within him, something with which he was comfortable in the absence of company.
Over a final hill he soared, and there within his sights were the cliffs before the ocean under which Zeal rested in pieces. And what was this? He swiftly halted his hasty flight onward, hovering perfectly still and observing a ... person? Not just any person, though. He felt something inside himself seethe. Dalton...
He threw his cape down behind him with a bitter huff. Why was this golden-haired nuisance in his sights again, standing on his cliffs, and no doubt investigating his good omen? How was he even alive, or not in some far-off dimension? And what was this metal machination he had pulled out of the blue? What was he trying to prove now? Did he want to lose that other eye of his? The negative thought train could have gone on forever, along with the disappointed that he felt sensing anger and wrath beginning to rise up within him once more. What made him most angry was that this old nemesis dared tread on his newfound serenity. Would he have to dispose of him to regain it? It seemed like it would be worth it. One last obstacle to freedom – gone. And the trade-off? Just a single pitiful life.
But wait, he thought recalling, one life gone and the future might be completely different. He thought of his companions, not wanting to chance their future on his selfish urge. But he had certainly not seen any evidence of Dalton's influence on the future. And he couldn't imagine the scum doing anything useful like resituating the Earthbound people as the reigning inhabitants.
Thus far his considerations had little effect on what he felt was the looming resolution. Already, a great black tide had begun to rise behind him. The dark waters rose up around him carrying him high in his heart and mind, and he knew what they beckoned of him. He could taste the sweetness of the evil prospect between his tongue and the roof of his mouth. But no sooner did he taste it than he noticed the black tide begin to take a disappointing dip. Something significant was keeping him from wanting to destroy Dalton outright. His inner monster pushed him to come to an agreement with this something, and quickly. What? What? He asked hoping for a reply. Tread lightly, came the response. It was his concern for his companions. He could not deny it, but he could live with it, and with the caution it demanded of him. Easy.
He would not kill Dalton. He would just fire a first shot, and would see what happened from there.
Samus' relief suddenly faded as she gathered that something very troublesome was approaching her. Beneath the serene landscape a darkened surge had begun to rise. Tortured tides began to rock her mind this way and that, pulling her consciousness away. Her eyes began to close.
No! A piercing psychic arrow struck her between the eyes from a black and jagged off-shore rock that looked like a demon's shadow. She stood up straight and rigid, wide-eyed and transfixed on the rock as it addressed her with a lashing hiss. “Turn around! Quickly!”
She gasped at the urgency of the message, and whipped herself around to see a gale of ethereal black thorns racing towards her.
