Ruining the seers’ reputations would be the icing on the karma cake. Ziggy and I had already made a quick stop onDionaeaon our way home to enact some sweet revenge of our own.
More psychic warfare.
The last Uulvin had heard, we’d freed Uuktar, thanks to their sob story of “unjust persecution.” With us presumably falling under their sibling’s hypnotism trap,of coursewe would then do their bidding, removing the shield protecting Karn so these snakes could have an unlimited supply of innocent Trols at their disposal.
Sike!
Gabe kept Uuktar knocked out for the entire journey back toDionaeaso they couldn’t warn their psychic sibling before we arrived. By the time we appeared outside the Hydrassians’ half-shielded cave complex—with an unconscious seer in tow—it was too late for them to protect themselves.
All it took was for me to set eyes on Uulvin before Gabriel Suarez got to work. As soon as he was done extracting every shred of useful intel from their brain, I created shields around both Uulvin and Uktar’s minds, barring them from not only telepathically communicating with each other, but accessing their psychic powers at all.
Because we want them to remember how it felt.
Needless to say, these personal prisons did not go over well with the elders, but Ziggy coolly stepped in to remind everyone the Eki could return at any moment to finish the shields, trapping them inside their caves permanently.
With a dozen hungryDionaea muscipulato munch on ‘em a little.
He is so effortlessly sexy and threatening, I cannot.
Uulvin had made one last ditch effort to plead their case, dramatically wailing that losing one’s powers was a fate worse than death. This was a little hypocritical, considering they’d done exactly that to Ziggy the last time we were here, but I focused on pointing out thattheywere the ones who had defied destiny itself.
Zero sympathy for fools in the Find Out stage of Fucking Around.
Thanks to Gabe’s espionage, we learned the sneaky snakeswerethe ones who’d anonymously tipped off the Stellarians to rescue the egg from the Maroxians. They also encouraged the Irathians to attack Stellaria—promising victory, of course—but that was done as a cover, to distract from the Hydrassian mercenary simultaneously harassing gem vendors in the bazaars.
To no one‘s surprise, denying their mercenary side hustle turned out to be just another lie on the pile. Just as Ziggy had deduced, the Hydrassians fabricated an entire mythology around Trols and karnilian for the sole purpose of lining their own pockets, and they were more than happy to sell their services to others to fund their lucrative scheme.
Not only did they hire themselves out as gemstone bloodhounds, haunting busy Muonovas, but they offered vague promises of victory during psychic readings to encourage the hunt. With how single-mindedly focused on intergalactic supremacy certain species were, it was unsurprisingly simple to trick them into believing the hype.
This cycle of deception and destruction would have continued indefinitely were it not for the Hydrassians finally ending up on the wrong side of fate.
What the seers hadn’t counted on was theirownimperial blind spot, in the form of a seasoned mercenary by the name of Ziggy Andromeda. While his deeply ingrained distrust was something Dr. Micah was privately working on, Zig’s suspicious nature made him an excellent bloodhound as well.
My man has a PhD in sniffing out bullshit.
Uulvinhadgotten one thing right about Ziggy: Hewashonorable, and despite the pain of dismantling his own systemic biases, he continuously chose uncomfortable truth over supposed supremacy. He bravely, if not begrudgingly, embraced his destiny as aheroto his own kind—a destiny that, ironically, had once been predicted by the Hydrassians to his former Astrum Force commanders.
If that’s not poetic—petty—justice, I don’t know what is.
What nobody predicted, including Ziggy, was that he would form a bondwith the Trol at the center of it all. Even with him initially trying to claim the karnilian was to blame for awakening his previously nonexistent parental instincts, I knew there was more to it than that.
While my childhood was far from perfect, I’d grown up in relative comfort, and my older siblings had taken care of me. Both Zig and Pedro were orphans dismissed by their own kind, solo travelers adrift among the stars with no family to call their own.
Until they found each other.
Despite his generational trauma, Ziggy’s ice-cold exterior had started to crack, just enough to allow a certain ferocious furbaby into his heart.
And this is why an official “Best Space Dad in All the Galaxies” certificate now hangs in the Lodger cockpit.
We were still unsurewherePedro’s egg had originally come from. The Eki’s shield stopped anyone from entering orleavingKarn, so the little Trol being blasted into space like Kal-El in their Kryptonian Rocket was out of the question. A more likely scenario was Pedro’s birthing parent being held in captivity somewhere with the egg either lost or stolen from there.
It was a moot point anyway. Pedro had found their family, and the general plan was to leave Karn alone until long after our Hydrassian smear campaign went live. Only when it was deemed safe for Trols to be seen in public again would the Eki evenconsiderremoving the shields keeping the planet undetectable and safe.
We knew this because we’d also made a stop on Ekistron on our journey home—mostly so Ziggy could swallow his pride andapologizeto Leeloo, but also so I could begthe Jedi Master to let me train with them again.
I wanna be a space wizard, goddamnit!
True to form, that shit-stirring Eki let mesweatfor a good sixty seconds before they replied. Right as I was about to go lie down on the Intergalactic Highway, Leeloo cackled from deep within their sparkly robes and cheerfully agreed to teach me the ways of the matter manipulator Force.
