The moment the Queen disappeared through the cavern, John’s knees hit the ground. The chamber faded away.

  He wasn’t falling. He was being pulled, dragged inward, as if his thoughts were unraveling thread by thread into something vast and ancient. The flicker of torchlight and fungal growth dimmed into nothing. In its place, a sky—not one he recognized—opened above him. It was black and gold, scattered with stars. He envisioned a ruined skyline of alien towers which stretched toward the firmament, a city he’s never known. The illusion gripped his mind.

  He stood in the center of it. Alone.

  A shape formed from the void. White-armored, immense, and impossible, Thariel’s Hyperion towered with the elegance of a god and the cruel certainty of a tyrant. His white mask was blank, emotionless, and yet his presence filled the air with the kind of pressure that came before the call to charge into battle.

  “Thariel,” John exhaled.

  The figure turned its head toward him, and though it made no sound, its voice cut through him like a scalpel made of ice and churned inside his mind.

  “She betrayed me,” Thariel said.

  John flinched.

  “You’re not real,” he said, trying to assert control. “This is a dream.”

  The Hyperion stepped forward.

  “Everything you see—everything you feel—it’s real enough to change you.”

  Each word manifested in the air and resonated inside his bones. Was it an implanted memory? Was it a withdrawal effect from Thariel’s grenade? Was it something more dangerous, a shared consciousness which bled into his own? He didn’t know.

  Thariel lifted his hand.

  Around them, the vision shifted. He found himself floating in the dark abyss of space and looking down on hundreds of planets which drifted aimlessly around him like a living tapestry of burning colonies whose smoke drifted up past their individual atmospheres and into the cold void.

  That’s when he heard Laureline’s voice. Laureline. Her words were tainted with sorrow and as distant as the planets. “John…”

  “You think you know us,” Thariel said—now using John’s voice. “You think because you can touch us, speak to us, pity us…you can decide what we are.”

  John’s hands shook. “What are you?”

  The illusion morphed. The planets faded away and crumbling marble buildings emerged around them. John stood in the center of it. The origin of the architecture was indistinguishable, but it was clearly the ruins of some great city.

  “We are what you made us,” Thariel said, standing in front of him. He looked down at John whose chest tightened from the feeling of inferiority.

  “No,” John said. “You made this choice. You attacked Earth and its colonies. You destroyed New York City. You killed millions. Then, you unleashed the Braccari on Eurynome and controlled them with the Idol. You slaughtered an entire colony just for research. Was it worth it? Did you find the answers you were looking for?”

  Thariel’s body flickered, like a faulty projection. “No.”

  Then, the illusion of Thariel’s Hyperion split into two, then three. Each wore a different face—one was Laureline’s emotionless mask. One was Samantha, her eyes closed. One was John himself, bruised and bloodied.

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  “Choice is an illusion when your fate is shackled,” Thariel said.

  The air felt thicker, his thoughts were slower. Something inside of him stirred. In the shared link between him and Hyperions there was a hint of truth. He felt them. Not just Thariel, but every Hyperion. Some of them slumbered in their cryonic sanctums, hidden in stasis. They watched John. They waited for something. There were thousands of them.

  “Why me?” John asked, barely able to speak.

  Thariel’s mask glowed faintly. He tilted his head as if amused.

  “Because you are already like us. You perform. You shift. You adapt. But you don’t belong. You are a creature of mirrors, John Drayton. That’s why they crowned you an Arbiter. That’s why you were chosen.”

  He wanted to scream, to fight, and to deny Thariel’s words. But deep down, a part of him understood. Even since he touched Laureline’s psionic conduit, a sliver of her spirit carved its way into John’s heart and now lived inside of him. He felt her shared pain and her loyalty. He also felt her deep mourning.

  John’s vision trembled. The illusion of power flickered as if the system couldn’t sustain itself against the rising clarity of truth.

  “You’re trying to make me doubt my decisions,” John said, fists clenched. “But I’m not like you. I make my own choices. I won’t live in fear of a future unknown.”

  Thariel’s voice became a low haunting whisper which came from every direction. “You will fear me in the end.”

  A thousand doors appeared around him. Each one opened to a different scene: friends betrayed, colonies annihilated, different futures presented. Some showed him dead. Others showed him celebrated by the masses like a king.

  All of them ended with flickering flames that started at the base of the door and rose higher until the entire doorway was ablaze like a portal to hell.

  “No,” John said. “I refuse to believe any of this.”

  The vision cracked. Thariel’s body fractured like glass. The sky above split open with a shriek of white light. For a fleeting, soul-searing second, John saw through the illusion.

  He saw Hyperia, the collection of Hyperion controlled solar systems on the other side of the Abyssal Zone. The collage of stars and planets floated in a sea of molten void.

  At the center of planets, his gaze fell to one in particular which only vaguely resembled the giant swaths of blue and green from Earth. As if he had a telescopic lens, his vision zoomed in on the planet and the picture changed to somewhere deep within a sanctum carved of purple crystal where Thariel knelt. Around him were thousands of Hyperions hung in suspension. Each one slumbered inside a hollow crystal sarcophagi.

  And as John stared, he felt them watching him. He was the intruder in a court of gods.

  The vision collapsed with a roar of static. Everything folded in on itself and it vanished.

  John slammed back into his body, into reality, with a jolt. His back hit something hard. Air burned in his lungs like fire.

  He blinked several times and his vision of the interior of the Hemingway returned. Looking around, he realized he was inside the med bay.

  Samantha’s voice broke through first, distant and shaking.

  “John! Stay with me. You’re here. You’re safe.”

  Her hands were on his chest. Her face just above his, pale and tense.

  He coughed hard. “I saw it.”

  Samantha steadied him. “Saw what?”

  “I saw Hyperia.”

  His mind reeled from the revelation. The silence of the Hyperions echoed like bells inside his skull. They were close. And they were waiting.

  “Thariel’s not alone,” he said. “He’s leading an army even bigger than we ever imagined.”

  Somewhere deep within him, beneath the fear, the shard of Thariel’s voice remained in his mind and spoke final words. “We are what you made us.”

  ###

  Author’s Note:

  This episode is published here up to the 75% mark.

  The remaining chapters—including the climax and aftermath—are available in the complete episode on Amazon.

  https://www.royalroad.com/amazon/B0GKQLW699

  Thank you for reading and supporting the series.