Heretical Edge

Charmeine And Sariel During The Early Olympus Years

Charmeine always hated visiting work camps. She was an assassin, an agent who prided herself on doing her job and leaving before the enemy had any idea she was there. She was good at what she did, good at spotting weaknesses, either in a group or an individual, and exploiting them. She was good at ripping things down. She was good at killing.

What she was not good at, besides patience (she really did not like sitting around and waiting), was being the center of attention. And that was precisely what she always ended up being whenever she came to these work camps.

The camps themselves were full of individuals from dozens of different species, all put to hard labor for various reasons. Most were being punished for one reason or another, though for some, this was the best life they could have expected.

Then there were the Mendacia, the Lies. They were Seosten whose possession ability was broken. They were failures, only one step removed from being Cronus himself. They were simply wrong, and the fear that every Seosten had that one of these Lies would end up mutating into another Cronus went unspoken, but understood. That was the real truth, the reason Mendacia were so hated, because they existed as a reminder of him. And there was always the fear of what the Seosten species could still potentially become.

Yes, she truly hated being here, and seeing the way these people stared at her. No matter what she did, Charmeine could never blend in here. They always knew what she was, always recognized her as not being one of them. Yet in this case, she had no choice. They were here to find an informant about a black market magic dealer who was apparently operating on this planet. Charmeine just hoped that they could talk to this person, get the information, and leave.

Unfortunately, the problem with that little goal was that her partner hadn't shown up yet. They were supposed to interrogate their source together and get the information out of him, no matter what it took.

Cursing Sariel under her breath, Charmeine looked around once more, noting dozens of nearby individuals staring right back. They wouldn't say anything in front of her unless she asked a direct question. They would always do exactly what she told them to, but they would never volunteer anything. They knew what she was, and there would always be that rift between them.

Another curse came as she checked the time once again before reaching for her glass of water. She was seated at a table on the edge of this forested area, watching the workers cart away long purple trees that had been chopped down. The trees would be very carefully cracked open, the special sap within harvested for a multitude of important uses. Unfortunately, the sap reacted poorly to magic, so the trees had to be chopped down and carried away manually. To say nothing of how careful one had to be to safely extract the sap without causing an explosion.

As she sat there and glowered, Charmeine set her empty glass down with a heavy thunk. One of the nearby Mendacia didn't waste a moment before refilling it from a pitcher. Soon, there was another full glass of ice cold, flavorful water sitting in front of her. Which was good, considering how thirsty the dust around here was making her. And not just her. There were water fountains set up all over the camp for the workers to refill their canteens. Canteens that were used often.

This was absurd. They were losing all the light. They needed to find this contact and get the information out of him so they could take down this smuggler, this traitor, and move on. In normal cases, Charmeine simply would have snapped at her partner through the magical psychic connection Seosten used when they were on a mission. But in this case, Sariel had insisted it wasn't necessary. Which should have told Charmeine right then that things were going to go wrong. She honestly had no idea why Puriel insisted that she teach this woman how to do what she did. Yes, her Tartarus gifts made her a natural for it, but was it truly something she could embrace? Could she do this job without wandering off and getting lost like a child?

Charmeine was starting to doubt that, despite some impressive moments. Especially when it came to times like this, when she was left sitting here waiting for that woman. Where was she? Why hadn't she appeared yet? What on the cusp of the void could be taking her so long?

In her annoyance, Charmeine didn't even notice that she had once again emptied her glass until she saw the Mendacia from before reach out to fill it again. No words were exchanged between them. There didn't need to be. The glass was empty, and it was the Lie’s job to fill it.

Tapping a finger against the glass, Charmeine found herself asking, “Have any other… guests besides myself arrived today?” If Sariel still hadn't even made it down from the Olympus, she was going to regret ever signing up for this mission, ever boarding the Olympus, ever being a part of that experiment, and even being born. Charmeine would make her life miserable for as long as it took for her to get the message.

Standing beside the table, the Mendacia spoke for the first time in a simple voice. “Not since I arrived.”

The words, and her voice, made Charmeine cough up the water she had just been drinking and spin in her chair, knocking it over as she bolted upright and stared that way with her mouth agape. “Sariel?” Sure enough, it was the woman she had been waiting for. She was the one who had been standing by the table refilling her glass. “How long have you been there?!”

Sariel, dressed in the typical unremarkable and drab clothing that the Mendacia tended to wear, simply replied, “Only a few minutes. I got what we needed.”

That made the other woman blink. “What do you mean you got what we needed? You found out where the contact is?”

“I found him and got the information,” came the easy reply. “We can go get the black marketeer after the sun goes down. He won't be there until then. If anything else changes, they’ll let us know.”

Charmeine continued to stare at her in disbelief for another moment. It wasn't just the clothes. That didn't account for how certain she had been that the woman standing next to her was one of the Mendacia. Charmeine noticed things. She certainly wasn't blind. If it had been almost anyone else from the Olympus, even one of the rank and file crew members, she would have immediately picked them out. The way they stood, the way they moved, the way they breathed. She would have known that they didn't belong here.

But Sariel? She had immediately blended in. And not just for Charmeine. If the other workers had noticed a true Seosten, particularly someone from a bridge crew, amongst them, they would have tried to help. They would have followed her around and offered to do everything for her. She blended in amongst them as well. She had simply put on that jumpsuit and completely disappeared into the role. And she had done so well enough to move through the work camp without being detected. She had done everything they came here to do, but without disrupting the camp itself. Well, without disrupting it any more then Charmeine already had.

It was just slightly possible that she might need to reevaluate Sariel.

Shaking her head, the woman took another drink of water. “Well, if we've got a couple hours before we can finish this, I guess we should eat something. So why don't you tell me what's good around here?”

“What’s good for someone like you,” Sariel asked quietly, “or someone like them?” Her eyes shifted to the mingling workers.

“You know what? Surprise me,” Charmeine replied. “I’m starting to think that’s what you’re good at.”

********

Several months passed. The two of them had long since moved on to other assignments. That one had barely been a blip on the scanners for the most part, other than the way it made Charmeine start to reconsider the other woman a bit. After they located the black marketeer and took him off the board, they had gone on to the next job, and the next. Their ship moved on, the Olympus traveling to new planets as they continued to explore areas of space that weren't as well known, searching for potential weapons or other advantages to use in the war against the Fomorians.

But eventually, their travels brought them back to that planet. There had been word about something happening there that they needed to investigate. The details were scarce.

Or at least, they had been scarce until the Olympus arrived. Then the reality became all too clear. A reality that pissed Charmeine off almost more than she could articulate.

Apparently the situation had been that the work camp for those special trees needed more workers. Or rather, replacement ones. Each and every one of them had died. That had raised a few eyebrows higher up, and the Olympus had been sent to check on things. The supervisor of the camp, a Seosten named Talsain, had made an official report about an illness that had swept through the camp, some sort of fast-acting plague that was gone as quickly as it arrived. A fast-acting plague that somehow affected dozens of different species all very quickly.

It was obviously nonsense. Charmeine and Sariel, who had been sent down to investigate this together due to the fact that they were the ones who handled the first situation and knew the place, realized that immediately. But what they didn't know was what exactly had happened and why.

And now they did. With some effort, they had tracked down the mass grave site where the workers had been buried, out in the wild. Digging up several of them, they found the actual cause of death. Namely, laser wounds in their heads. They had not died of illness. They had been executed.

Sariel had gone to make a report, while Charmeine made sure the evidence was preserved. They had to find out why this was done. There was no possible way that Talsain wouldn't have known they were killed like this. He had lied in his report. But it wasn't as though he would be punished for that. At least no worse than a slap on the wrist. These people weren't seen as that important. And he was very connected. He was an important man. Or at least, his family was. He had connections.

That, honestly, was probably why the original story about the plague, weak as it was, had been mostly accepted. The only reason they were even here was because Puriel had received a curious query about whether any of his people had been affected by the illness. He decided to bring them here to double check things. And now they knew the truth. These people had been put to death by firing squad. Or something to that effect.

Muttering a curse under her breath as she stood at the edge of the makeshift graveyard, Charmeine stepped over to the body that Sariel had checked. It was just like the two that she herself had looked at, with one hole through the forehead. But there was something else. The body had something in its hand. Frowning, she turned it over and pushed the fingers open. There was a memory crystal embedded in the Mendacia’s palm. Sariel would have seen it when she checked the body. She would have touched it. And, judging from the way it was sparking, the crystal would immediately give its memories to anyone who did.

So, Charmeine did just that. Which was when she got all the answers she needed, and then some. The memory crystal was from shortly before the Mendacia died. He had recorded it, pushing his memories into the crystal in the hopes that someone would find it and do something. They were memories of the entire work camp being lined up and interrogated about which of them had given up that information about the black marketeer. Because, as it turned out, he hadn't been working alone. He was working for Talsain. And now that particular well-connected Seosten was very pissed off, because his money maker was gone. In his rage, he'd had the entire work camp executed simply to ensure that whoever had given that information away would be killed.

And he would get away with it. At worst, he would find himself shifted around and moved to another planet. That was the most punishment that could be expected given who his family was. They would silence everything. They would see this utter waste of resources, this mass execution, as acceptable losses.

Charmeine was disgusted by that. She held no particular love for Mendacia, of course. No more than any normal Seosten did. But there was a difference between that and killing all of them, and all these other people from various species. They were living beings who contributed to the war effort. They did the best they could. They tried. They did not deserve to be executed and thrown away. But they had been, and the person responsible for it was going to walk away with no real punishment, just because of his political power.

Or… was he? A sudden thought made Charmeine bolt upright and grab her communicator. She tried to call Sariel, but there was no response. The woman had turned her own device off. And, yet again, she had declined the usual mental connection spell.

Yeah, this wasn't right. Abandoning the idea of maintaining the evidence, Charmeine ran back to her own hovercycle and jumped on it. Revving the engine, she spun the bike around and headed for the main camp as quickly as the thing could take her.

Reaching the tower where the camp's management resided, she jumped off the bike and started to go in, only to be distracted by a crowd that had gathered near the base of the tall structure. Moving that way, she found an assortment of guards and workers around a body lying broken in the dirt. A body that had very clearly fallen from the top of the tower.

It was Talsain, the Seosten. Possibly the most politically powerful Seosten she had ever personally laid eyes on in the flesh. He may have been assigned to this backwater planet, but only because he wanted to be there. He wanted this assignment, because it put him right where he needed to be for his black market activities. That much was obvious now. His extended family had several Seraph members. Others were captains and admirals controlling some of the most powerful, most decorated ships in the fleet. Still more were scientists who had developed state-of-the-art weapons or spells.

His family, his people, were untouchable. And yet, there he was, lying dead on the ground.

Suicide, the guards were calling it. No one had gotten past them. No one had gone into his room. No one had come out again. Certainly no one had crippled the man's throat so he couldn't call out. The damage had been done in the fall. He had either intentionally killed himself, or simply been too drunk and accidentally fell.

But Charmeine knew the truth. She saw the Mendacia who wasn't, the figure standing at the edge of the crowd. Ever since that day when Sariel had stood beside her for so long, Charmeine had made it a point to pay more attention and had really watched the woman. She saw the way the other Seosten could seemingly disappear simply by adopting the posture and stride of a Mendacia. She put on one of their jumpsuits or robes, and became almost as invisible as if she had used an actual spell to disappear.

The guards had completely failed to see her. She walked right past them and they didn't even notice, just because they were accustomed to ignoring Lies and seeing them as part of the background. She walked past them and went into that tower, into that room. She hadn't waited for the man to be slapped on the wrist. She hadn't waited for him to get out with his political power. She hadn't come back to call for help. She didn't turn him in. She came here, made herself invisible in a way that spells would never detect, and went into his rooms to kill him.

She executed one of the most politically powerful men either of them would ever see. And now she was standing there, in full view of the guards and other security who were there investigating the death, with the full knowledge that they wouldn’t so much as look twice at someone who appeared to be a Mendacia.

More importantly, she was standing in full view of Charmeine, who could point the finger at her. Only then did the woman realize that Sariel was looking at her, waiting to see what she did. Waiting to see if she was going to expose her.

For a long moment, the two stood there, before Charmeine looked back to the body, then closed the distance between herself and Sariel. Her voice was flat. “Come on then, let’s get back to the ship.

“They’re going to bring in people to dress that piece of shit up for a fancy funeral, and I don’t feel like sticking around for that.”

************

The Seosten Flick Possessed During The Mission To Save Sariel

Her name was Lailah, after her ancient ancestor, who had been one of those lost in the original war with Cronus, before he fled the Seosten homeworld. It was tradition in her family for at least one living member to carry that name. From the moment that the original had been taken and lost forever, when her younger sister had changed her name to that in her honor, there had never been a time when a Lailah didn't exist in their bloodline. The current one had always been incredibly proud to carry on that tradition, and was determined to make her ancestor, the original Lailah, happy with what she did with that name.

Which was why the things she had been considering over the past year were so difficult to accept. Ever since those humans had assaulted the science base and prison that Lailah had been assigned to work at, the Seosten woman had been forced to do some difficult… thinking.

No, that wasn't quite right either. It wasn't simply the fact that they had assaulted the place where she worked, and it wasn't all of the humans. It was the one who had possessed her, the one who used her stolen power to possess and control Lailah herself. Felicity Chambers. Ever since she had been possessed and controlled by Felicity Chambers, things had been so very complicated.

It all had to do with Ishtien. That was Lailah’s friend, her childhood friend who actually worked with her on the ship. He was the only person she had from her childhood, and when the humans had invaded, when she had been possessed and controlled by Felicity Chambers, Lailah had been terrified that the human girl would force her to hurt Ishtien. Or worse, kill him. The thought of her own hands being puppeted into killing her best friend like that had… it had left her so terrified that she had actually spoken up. She had begged the human girl to spare her friend, had told her how to stun him, had offered to surrender herself for permanent enslavement or even death if it would make her happy. She had offered anything the girl wanted if it meant she would spare Ishtien.

And the girl had. She had agreed to spare him, had knocked him out and left him alive. Shortly after that, Felicity Chambers had knocked Lailah out as well, leaving her unconscious near Ishtien while going about the rest of her rescue mission with her companions.

For the past year since then, Lailah had been forced to question many things. But two queries in particular stood out. The first was the question of whether the humans had truly been in the wrong, given their entire endeavor had been built around saving not only prisoners who were being put through… very bad things against their will, but Seosten prisoners. One in particular for certain, but they had rescued them all from what had apparently been horrible conditions.

And the other thing that Lailah had been forced to ask herself over the past year was whether, if the situation had been reversed, she would have listened if Felicity Chambers had begged her not to kill her own friend.

Throughout her entire life, since the moment she had been born, Lailah had been taught about the superiority of her species. But it was a superiority that came with responsibility. In those days, now so far in the past, their people had helped create the most dangerous threat in the universe. It was their responsibility to stop that threat, and to do that, they had enhanced themselves beyond what any other species was capable of. At least, the ones who regularly interacted with the universe at large. Their technology, their magic, their ability to control other species, it all gave them an advantage.

Not that it had always been like that, of course. Very early on in their war against the Fomorians, the Seosten had attempted to work alongside allies. But that had gone very wrong. That had failed, and the Seosten had known from that point that they could not work with allies. Their only choice was to force every species in the universe to work against the Fomorians, for their own good.

All of which meant that every Seosten was raised under the absolute and unbendable truth that they were the only hope the universe had. If every species was left to fight the Fomorians on their own, they would all die on their own. They would squabble amongst themselves until it was too late. They would try to reason with creatures who could never be reasoned with. They would bicker and argue and in the end, they would be wiped out. Slavery was not the happiest option, but it was the one that kept the most people alive. Apologies could be made once the Fomorians were gone.

Those thoughts were running through the Seosten woman's head as she sat up in bed in her cabin on the ship that had become her new assignment. She wasn't certain why she was sitting up, or why she was awake. The last thing she knew, she had been sleeping. It was a sleep which, as most had been ever since the raid on Kushiel’s facility, was full of dreams. Dreams about that night, and about being possessed. Dreams which forced her to question what sort of people would keep prisoners like that. And what sort of people would lead a potentially suicidal raid to rescue those prisoners.

Dreams that made her question what sort of person she was versus what sort of person Felicity Chambers was.

But all that was normal. Or it had become normal over the past year. She never came to any sort of conclusion, yet the thoughts were nothing new. So why was she awake now? Why was she panting so heavily? It hadn't been a nightmare. She knew what her dreams were, and while confusing and unsettling, they were not terrifying. But in this moment, sitting up in this bed, she was afraid. Why was she afraid?

The room was dark, pitch black just the way she liked it. It was not a very large room, given her relatively low rank. If she stretched out in that seated position, she could touch the opposite wall. Yet in that moment, Lailah became convinced that reaching out would not end with her hand against that reassuring metal, but against something far worse. Something standing in the room with her. Something taking up most of the space as it stood beside her bed and stared at her.

It was right there. Tilting her head up slightly while staring into the pitch black room, she could feel it staring back at her. Their gazes were locked.

It was impossible. Nothing could be on the ship with her. There could be no sort of intruder or the alarms would have gone off. There wasn't a monster in her room. She was a warrior. She was a Seosten. This was absurd. Why was she shaking? What was wrong with her? Just turn on the light. Command the light to fill the room. That was all she had to do to banish this absurd fear. And yet, though her mouth opened, the words wouldn't come. She had no weapon on her, not while she was sleeping. Her weapons were next to the door, completely out of reach. She had no field engraver to create spells either. Everything she had was put away. She could tell the ship to sound the alarm, but the best case scenario from something like that would be a severe reprimand for a false alarm, and possibly time with the ship’s doctor.

The worst case scenario, of course, was that there really was something here in the room, and it would kill her the moment she tried to call for help.

For what felt like ages, Lailah sat in silence and stared at what she knew was a monster waiting to rip her apart. She felt like a helpless child, one that would be ridiculed even by other children. The fear was palpable, something she couldn't control or understand. The monster was there. It was right there. It was toying with her. The second she moved or spoke or did anything, she would be dead. Worse than dead, she would be taken.

The thought came again, the thought of Felicity Chambers and what her companions had done. But in this case, the memories didn't confuse her, or leave her questioning the worthiness of her own people. In this case, she saw that bravery as something to live up to. She saw it as something to draw strength from. Eyes closing briefly, she took a breath and let it out, then spoke the words to tell the lights to come on. At the same time, she opened her eyes and raised her hands protectively, even as the darkness was vanquished. The lights would come on to reveal another white empty room, and she would laugh at her own fear.

She was not alone, and she did not laugh.

A figure stood in her room. Yet there was no figure. There was a person, but there wasn't. It was a memory of a person, yet the memory was happening in that moment. It was both real and false. She was awake, yet dreaming. Something, someone, was reaching out to her from someplace very far away. From the very limits of all reality, stretching across the space of millions of light-years, someone stood in that room with her. Someone whose name she shared.

“Find her,” Lailah, the first Lailah, implored in a voice that should never have existed. “Find Felicity Chambers.

“And tell her that Cronus is coming for her.”