Aurora Burning (The Aurora Cycle #2)(87)

I sit now beneath our trees, strumming the instrument’s strings, watching her. Aurora floats high above me, just a silhouette against a blinding sky. Boulders larger than the Zero orbit her in perfect synchronicity, moving in all directions. She floats in the center, sitting as if on the air, her right eye burning. I watch as one boulder shatters into a thousand shards, its fragments forming a perfect sphere around her.

The Eshvaren floats nearby, watching. It does not look at me. It does not speak to me. As ever, I feel a vague sense of … not hostility, but unwelcome, in its presence. But as I strike chords upon the siif my be’shmai made me, I see that the hues within its crystal form change with the music I play.

“May I ask you something?” I call.

It does not look at me. But I feel a fraction of its attention shift.

Ask, it replies.

“A thought has been playing on my mind since we arrived.” I strum a minor chord, watch the Eshvaren’s hue shift and dance. “Why do you look like us?”

It turns its head then. Regarding me with kaleidoscopic eyes.

I do not fear this thing. A warrior fears only to never taste victory. But I feel the power in it. My people are one of the few species in the galaxy to still hold belief in the Eshvaren. The Ancient Ones were mythical figures to me as a child. And sitting here in the presence of their collected memory, I find its gaze … unsettling.

“I mean to say, you do not look exactly like us. But you are bipedal. Humanoid. Do you appear this way to make it easier for us to look upon you?”

It is a long time before the Eshvaren replies.

We do not look like you, young one, it finally says. You look like us.

“… I still do not understand,” I reply.

Nor do you need to.

“Perhaps not. But I wish to.”

Your wishes are irrelevant, young one. You are irrelevant.

I try to ignore the sting to my pride, keep my voice cool.

“Why do we look like you?”

The Eshvaren does not reply, its glowing eye on Aurora in the rose sky above.

“The Terrans, Betraskans, Chellerians, hundreds of other races,” I press. “We all wear similar shapes. We are all bipedal. Carbon-based. Oxygen breathers. The odds of that are next to impossible. Many among the milieu take our similarities as final proof of a greater power. As undisputable evidence of a … divine will. It is the basis of their United Faith. Of the existence of a god. A Maker.”

Again, the Eshvaren says nothing. But I push on.

“Our enemy knows much more than we do. The Ra’haam was there during the last battle. We cannot meet it in ignorance. If there is some knowledge we would benefit from in the coming fight, it might be dangerous to keep it from us.”

Finally, the Eshvaren glances at me. I feel a shiver down my spine and my fingers slip on the strings, setting a rainbow loose inside its form.

You would do well not to lecture on the price of keeping secrets.

I blink. “What do you mean by that?”

We have been preparing for eons to win this war. When we first defeated the Great Enemy, through one thousand years of blood and fire, we knew what needed to be done to ensure it did not rise again. And we know now. Better than you. Do not presume to lecture us on the perils of the deceit you so obviously reek of.

It turns its burning eyes back to Aurora.

Do not dare.

The siif is heavy in my hands. The Eshvaren’s words heavy in my chest.

I place the instrument aside and sit in silence.

And I am afraid.


Aurora

Esh has brought me somewhere new today. We flew for an hour, soaring over now-familiar landmarks. The meadow, with its pink carpet of flowers. The wide river I must have sunk into hundreds of times before I managed to part it. The tangled jungle where eventually every single leaf held still at the wave of my hand.

We end up on a cliff top, looking out over the broad vista of the Echo, the crystal city on the far horizon. I never thought about this place having an edge, but behind us is a kind of mist that slowly swirls and roils.

This is the end of the world, I guess.

I sit cross-legged on the edge of the cliff, looking out over my training ground, and I wait. Floating beside me, Esh eventually speaks.

You are failing us, Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley, it tells me.

I blink, looking up into its face and trying to hide the hurt in my own.

You have grown, it says. But not enough.

“What do you mean?” I demand. “I’m stronger than I’ve ever been. I can split rivers, shatter boulders—”

Your grip on this power must be enough to shatter not just boulders, but worlds. You know what you must do.

“I don’t—”

You do, it replies. You do know. You are still a prisoner to your old self. You are locked inside the idea of what you were. These affections, these bonds, they tug you backward, when your focus must be on what lies ahead. To truly embrace it, you must burn, Aurora Jie-Lin O’Malley. Or you must leave this place and resign yourself to all that will never be.

Even though it was months ago, I still remember my failure in the field of flowers. The image of my father. Some part of me knows that what Esh is saying is true—one word from a ghost was enough to make me lose my grip. Reduce me to tears. I can feel them even now, burning in my eyes, welling in my lashes.

“I want to,” I say.