A stern hand pressed against Il'ri Kamm's chest as he stood at the entrance to the cavernous creche that he had spent the last several million years using as a sort of incubator for what had once been a complicated species with one simple desire: To feed on psionic energy.
"You must not enter," the silver-haired female guarding the entrance said in a tone that brooked no hope for negotiation. He recognized the sharp lines of her jaw, the taut lips, the curls of silver twisting before her ears: Leandra Talhem, daughter of Opodi. "The circle's orders on this are clear. This project is at an end, Kamm."
The son of an original bloodline Kamir, it struck him as unfathomable that this child - no matter her hundreds of years - would have the temerity to touch him, let alone attempt to prevent him from concluding the work that he had begun centuries before she had been born. She represented the circle, or so she claimed. He had ceased answering to the circle decades ago, when they first raised concerns about dangers that might arise from the creation of a powerful sentient psionic species.
"We can control these creatures and use them to our own ends," Il'ri had insisted during that last hearing. "I am in the process of developing the means of controlling them." From a pouch slung around his hip, he produced a delicate silver holocrystal that projected an image of four rune-carved cylinders. "Apart, these are inert. Joined in proximity, they will serve as a potent harness that will simultaneously enhance the powers of the Hive Mind and keep it in check to ensure that those powers cannot be turned against us."
No, they had said. Control is a myth. Control is an illusion. You have not considered all possible permutations, they warned. How arrogant of them to doubt the careful diligence of his runework. His direct ancestors created the runic language that had been carved in the columns of the Gathering Circle. Those fools had no business questioning his competence.
So, he had left their presence, never to return. He had exiled himself to his adopted homeworld of Elakamia, devoted to perfecting the cylinders before putting them to use with his uplifted Hive Mind. How long had this minion of the circle been stationed outside the cavern? Il'ri wasn't sure. He had last looked in on his creation about six days earlier. She hadn't been there then. How did they know it would be today?
"I no longer answer to the circle," he told the female, aura burning crimson. In his arms, he carried an iron-braced wooden box. The box contained the four cylinders that he intended to arrange around the cavern to complete the process that had begun millions of years ago.
"What you do here today stands to have far-reaching effects, well beyond the horizon of this nothing world," Leandra said, her aura rippling pink-tinged red. "The circle is answerable to the Kamir as a whole. The circle made the erroneous choice of allowing you the opportunity to raise this dangerous species from obscurity and near extinction. The circle has decided that this mistake must be rectified."
A series of soft, chime-like sounds cascaded through the tunnel as four more Kamir materialized in shafts of shimmering cerulean light. They wore their silver hair cut short, a style favored by the elite Arcs of the Circle - highly trained warriors, translating to Elakamia so that they could join in the ambush of the ancient and revered Il'ri Kamm. Traitors to the true blood of the Kamir, one and all.
Kamm's aura dimmed to a dangerously dark crimson, an aura that presaged unmitigated violence. "The Hive Mind must be allowed to survive. It is a living thing. Control it, yes, we must. But you will not destroy it. Not while I draw breath in this dimension."
Leandra frowned at the elder Kamir, her own aura darkening to mirror his grim resolve. "The circle authorized elimination of this monstrosity by any means necessary. I do not wish to end your life, revered Il'ri Kamm, but we will not allow you to finish what you started."
The Arc warriors did not speak. They were rendered mute as children before their assignment to the corps. The circle deemed it more important that they master telepathic communication and, more often than not, allow their actions – or just their forboding presence - to do their talking. They wore black robes trimmed in silver. They perpetually subdued their bioluminescent auras, leading to a powdery white complexion that further set them apart from their olive-skinned kin.
They carried no visible weapons, which was standard for the corps: THEY were the weapons, honed sharp to preserve the peace and protect the circle from all threats. To face a single Arc warrior in combat was an invitation to assured defeat. Taking on four at once? Unimaginably foolish. But Il'ri Kamm had age, experience, and personal power working for him – the benefit of direct descent from the original Kamir bloodline.
~Surrender, Il'ri Kamm, and we will treat you with the honor and respect so richly deserved by an elder of our proud species,~ sent one of the Arcs into Kamm's mind. ~We do not wish to end this confrontation with violence.~
~No violence is required,~ Kamm replied. ~Leave me to finish what I have begun. That is all I ask.~
~We cannot,~ another Arc sent. ~The circle will not allow it.~
~Then what comes next falls on the heads of those who sent you to thwart me,~ Kamm sent back. He released the box containing the cylinders, shielding it within a glowing blue bubble of telekinetic force. With a wave of his hand and a thought, he translated the box to a distant place, untraceable by these interlopers unless they opted to leave him be. Seemed scant chance of that. So, he raised his arms toward the rough gray stone ceiling of the cavern, slender fingers giving off tremors of bloody light, eyes glowing a deep cerulean. Il'ri Kamm began gathering his abundant, ancient energies to face the Arcs. The air crackled and sparked, reeking of ozone, as the Arcs began to take up points of a square around the elder Kamir.
Leandra backed down the steps toward the Hive Mind cavern, her eyes fixed on Kamm, ready for him to make the effort to translate past her to reach his creation. She glowed a determined yellow-orange, emanating a telekinetic bubble around herself that expanded to block passage deeper into the cavern. Her hands danced in air, fingers manipulating the weave of the bubble so that it would stop both pedestrian and translational movement through the blocked space.
Kamm glowered down the blocked passage, scowling at Leandra as he intoned: “I save you for last, child.” He swung his gaze back to scan the Arcs as they forged molecular telekinetic swords from the very air and dust around them. Kamm watched as they drew the weapons back over their shoulders and began to move in a slow, unified circle around him. He turned opposite their path, snarling as the murderous crimson glow spread from his head to his toes. Together, the Arcs lunged toward the center from multiple directions. The first Arc sliced down and left. Kamm flowed like water, spilling from one position in space to the other as the molecular blade whickered past him. The second Arc jabbed directly at Kamm's throat. He slowed time long enough to turn perpendicular to the blade, allowing it to slide past, harmlessly. The third Arc undercut with the sword, aiming to chop the elder Kamir from hip to sternum. Kamm tumbled right, toward the fourth Arc, who was bringing his sword down from the other direction in a tactical follow-up to the third. And then Kamm came unfixed from reality, his component molecules losing integrity and scattering aside under the wind of the whooshing blades. Simultaneously, he was and he wasn't. Il'ri Kamm had discorporealized, although he retained his sense of self, his memories, and his power. He existed between dimensions. He watched with amusement as the confrontation with the Arcs played out over and over again across multiple iterations. In the first, the Arcs felled Il'ri Kamm early on. In another, they had arrived too late to stop the final step of the Hive Mind uplift, so he was able to unleash the whirling blue-green tendrils of his massively powered psionic pet on Leandra and her Arc allies before they could interfere. In another, he spirited himself away from the cavern along with the cylinders, content to bide his time elsewhere until the circle grew weary of hunting for him.
“Now,” Leandra commanded in Kamm's prime reality, where she had mistakenly assumed that his disappearance signified his escape, which would grant her time to neutralize the Hive Mind. She lowered the telekinetic defense over her passage so that the Arcs could descend into the main chamber. Three warriors walked down into the depths of the cavern, letting their air-forged swords dissipate as they gathered themselves for the task ahead. She followed after them.
The fourth Arc tilted his head, eyes narrowing, unwilling to accept the apparent flight of Il'ri Kamm at face value. He remained at the top of the steps, looking left and right down the corridor, still clutching his molecular sword. It seemed obvious that he expected the enemy to reappear at any moment. Keen insight, a wise consideration, but poor timing. Fatal timing. The swirling cloud began to manifest behind the Arc, a faint sparkling of coruscating blue light as Kamm collected himself at least enough to use his psionic abilities. The warrior turned, sword pulling back, in time to see the myriad molecules of the elder Kamir zip one after the other into the pores of the Arc's powdery white skin.
~How do you fight this?~ Il'ri Kamm sent into the Arc's mind. ~What tactics can you hope to employ against a foe who can become you?~ And, then, in that short span of moments, that is precisely what Kamm did. He nudged his persona forward into the mind of the Arc – a Kamir named Eelef Coray – and overwhelmed the other's self, driving it to the shadowy, labyrinthine passages of the oldest, most arcane reaches of Coray's mind. The Arc's eyes flashed bloody crimson, betraying the change, but it scarcely mattered to Il'ri Kamm. He tested the heft of the manifested sword, adjusted it ever so slightly with a wave of his free hand, knitting something new into the coagulated fabric of the construct. The blade began to pulsate with luminous veins of amber and blue.
In the main chamber, roaring wind whistled as the blue-white maelstrom of the Kamir-created Hive Mind tendrils swirled in the great basin that had formed in the cavern floor over the ages. Leandra Talhem had climbed to a promontory overlooking the Hivers, while the unpossessed Arcs took up positions along the rim. She raised her hands to either side, palms out, and closed her eyes as she began to chant softly. Her fingers began to flex and twirl, shaping runes of light in the air, forging what appeared to be a thin membrane of mist above the basin. A few more minutes, the mist would become a corrosive cloud, swirling in tandem with the Hivers. Then, Leandra would allow it to descend into the sentient storm, bringing to an end the illegal uplift procedure that had begun millennia ago.
The Arc closest to Leandra's position had lifted his eyes to the ceiling, arms outstretched, concentrating and lending his energy to the female as she continued to design the instrument of the monstrosity's destruction. He uttered a sound no louder than a gasp, unheard above the fervent growl of the Hiver storm, as the glittering molecular blade pierced through his chest. He erupted in a brilliant pillar of bluish-yellow as his body and mind dispersed, spilling like dying embers over the rim and into the mist.
The other two Arcs recognized the swift, sudden disconnect from their warrior brother. They broke concentration, quickly reassessing priorities to deal with Eelef Coray, who they quickly realized had been possessed by the rogue Kamir, Il'ri Kamm. He sensed their horror as it sank in that they would have to kill their longtime friend and ally in order to defeat their enemy.
Leandra opened her eyes as soon as she felt the deterioration of energies contributed by the Arcs. Her arms dropped to her side, ceasing the weaving of the psionic mist, which almost immediately began to fade. “Il'ri Kamm!” she wailed, struggling to be heard over the deafening roar within the cavern.
The first Arc kicked at Eelef's chest while the second dropped into a swinging kick toward his leg. If they could neutralize him, perhaps this conflict could end with the elder Kamir subdued and Eelef alive, restored once more to his own personality. Il'ri Kamm tore Eelef's molecules apart in a swirl of blue light, translated along the rim about twenty yards away, reassembling as his opponents' feet connected with nothingness. Their training carried them through, allowing a graceful reset as they started bounding toward their foe.
Il'ri Kamm waited, forcing a rictus-like grin to spread across Eelef's face as he forged a second molecular sword in the other hand. He used the Arc's combat training to leap into the fray, swinging both blades in sweeps and jabs. They shifted, dodged, mini-translated – all familiar enough tricks to the elder Kamir. He worked them into a pattern, easing them left, nudging them right, pressing the fight and then relenting, falling back eventually toward Leandra's promontory. The pattern continued, as intricate a weave as any Kamir power incantation, until Il'ri Kamm felt completely at peace and in tune with the shape of his design. They kept moving as he suddenly stopped, slashing left and right with his swords, impaling both Arcs and dispersing them in bursts of watery golden light.
That left the meddlesome Leandra, now scrambling down from the promontory, bringing her hands up in a furious weave that sent waves of pyrokinetic energy at the possessed Eelef. He faced into the onslaught, glowing swords raised in his arms, as the searing pulses charred the white skin on his face and hands, scorched the meager hair from his scalp. He felt no pain, but was certain that the agony was known all too well to the remnants of the Arc's self buried deep within. Il'ri Kamm dispensed with the swords, letting them crumble to motes of light and dust, and then gathered his energy for a counterstrike. He drove a spike of destructive mental energy toward Leandra's mind. She spun and crouched, avoiding that blast, and then came up with hands thrusting outward. A wall of force thundered toward Eelef. His body staggered back as if pushed by large hands. He made a good show of it, losing his balance, falling onto his backside. He mastered his fury, channeling it to anticipation, shifting his eyes from blatant crimson to a more cunning blue. And then he fell over on his side, wailing silently from intense agony that one might expect an unpossessed Arc to experience after the elder Kamir has fled his body. He sent out empathic waves of pitious suffering.
Leandra sensed victory, relief flooding her body. She felt certain that she could not eradicate the Hive Mind on her own, but if she could manage this Arc's pain adequately enough, it might yet be possible. “It's over,” she said, resting a hand on Eelef's shoulder as she knelt beside him. “We've defeated him.”
~Have you?~ Il'ri Kamm sent to her mind, just before thrusting out his own wall of psionic energy, catapulting the female off the rim, screaming as she plunged into the shallow basin. ~Show her what victory tastes like.~ The Hive Mind tendrils began to rise along the ends like the petals of a flower made of glowing fog, the tips descending inward toward the center where the shrieking Kamir waited. And then she vanished beneath the writhing tendrils that shimmered and sparked as they consumed her energy, leaving behind a lifeless, powdery husk. ~Many more where she came from,~ he promised the Hive Mind. ~Soon enough, you will feast.~