He moved a step closer and sent a vision to the core of Idan’s mind and soul.
It was of a woman he didn’t recognize.
Yet she appeared wrapped in light, her beauty so stunning his heart lurched.
Who is she?
‘A gift. Your destiny or perhaps even your doom,’ the old man murmured. ‘She’s entwined in your future and mine. When you see her, know that I will be on her heels. To either demand your obedience or to snatch back that god-power I gave you, if you refuse to serve me.’
With his business done, the stranger raised a hand and glimmered away, becoming a suggestion in the wind, his form unraveling into a shower of gold motes.
Fokk you, Idan snarled under his breath, surging to his feet and stretching the limbs that the older man froze.
A hard knot of stormy anger gathered in him.
He paced before his hut, a long-haired savage beneath a wild setting sky, as the fur on the frame by the barn flapped like a soft, accusing flag.
He fought memories of distant wars, courts, claimants, betrayal, and entrapment even as his third eye thrummed over his chest.
At some point, he cursed long and hard, narrowing his gaze at the horizon, where mountains cut the heavens, and the sea churned and heaved.
His days and nights of relative peace werefokkin’ over.
3
A Silent Desert
The transfer skimmer cut through the upper atmosphere as the planet’s semi-arid beauty spread unfurled beneath it in a vast, raw expanse.
Far above, a massive medical transport capital ship began to reverse thrusters, moving up and away from Tansinia Minor’s orbit and onto the next drop-off.
Sheba’s new home for the foreseeable future rose to meet her, gorges carved deep into the land, the Silent Desert pale in the east, the distant sea catching light at the horizon.
The planet appeared unyielding and unpretentious, stripped of the blare of traffic and the glare of neon.
Stripped of faux pretension, it was perhaps the best place to lose herself in work, where she’d forget the hot mess of her personal life.
Without warning, the atmosphere around the flyer fractured.
The hell?
Pressure shifted as light bent and fractured around a silhouette suspended ahead of her craft, drifting against the sky itself, not falling, not flying, justhovering before her.
The giant form burned with molten-gold brilliance, then vanished in an explosion of gold motes.
Her soul jolted as the craft got hit with a violent shudder.
Its engines coughed, and the dashboard erupted in erratic symbols and warning tones as systems failed in a cascade.
Her stomach dropped as panic cut clean through her chest.
‘What in Abbadon’s inferno?’ she hissed, reaching for the controls as the craft pitched hard and began to lose altitude.
She seized the manual override, hands white-knuckling the yoke, but it bucked, resisting her.
The craft fought hard, as though another will held the small ship in a firm, unyielding grip.
The nose tipped downward.
