The temperature around Gaia had escalated exponentially as they left the six scurrying Titans and two human younglings on loan from the Clone to their own devices. Fountains of sterling sparks had even begun to shower from yellow/orange plasma arcs vectoring from the creases of her narrowed eyes. The streams of hyper-excited electrons stretched across the path they walked and ground out on the near by rows of tree trunks from the pristine orchards on either side. Charred bark on both sides sent up slender tendrils of smoke from the insult.
“This farce tastes bitter in my mouth.” she hissed wide-eyed over her lithe shoulder as her avatar’s slim feet were taking steps far too quickly. Anyone looking on would know that Gaia was not a matriarch at peace with current events.
As always, Machitis followed Gaia one stride behind her right shoulder. As such, she anticipated the piercing red glare of his wavering ocular rings even before he had made it. But his accompanying telepathic words were unexpected. Mother, your fears are not unjustified. But we have faced and overcome worse than this. You will see it through—
Afraid! Who says I’m afraid!?! I just want to put a few new orifices in that Leopards invested Tenochtitlan hide ! Gaia’s mental voice virtually screeched as she cut off her Enforcer’s mental sending.
Machitis’ voice was level and rock solid as it aways was. Yes, I can both see and appreciate that Mother…And if you hadn’t jumped down my throat just now, I would have believed you weren’t scared. Gaia could hear his mind racking up a point of victory in their ever continuing exchange.
Ahh…ya…I… Gaia mentally sputtered with chagrined realization of her self betrayal. …Very cute! She bit off as she turned a childish full-faced squint at him. Her bared teeth making a mockery of a grin. But she couldn’t deny that Machitis was right, if only partially. It was true without question that the Star Children had survived much worse. But on his second statement. It wasn’t the pup now sitting as leader of the Aztecs after consuming his mother that she was afraid of. Gaia could dispose of him with both her eyes closed and most of her meridians in idle. But…what had changed him…what had been feeding on him…that did terrify her. Even now, twelve gyra later, Gaia was still reeling at its overwhelming malignancy for her, her Star Children, and for the entire iteration…
Twelve Gyra Previously…
For convenience, Gaia’s gynaeceum was centrally located in the verdant lushness of the flowered gardens fostered midpoint between the multitudes of fruit bearing orchards and the varieties of olives and grapes composing the vineyards. She loved the spot because it served as a nexus for the pulsing energy coming directly from the neo zoi’s core. With every passing micro gyra the signs that it was ready to be born grew stronger… Presently, however, she would almost have traded where she was sitting with being back on the run from Zelviz and his slavering hordes. Stifling a sign of weary fatigue she looked at the line of supplicant Star Children as they cued at the entrance to her private chambers. A line that was steadily growing less and less patient while they all awaited their individual audiences with her. For both them and her, the fact that the meeting to state their support of House Olympia’s resumption of the Sol Throne was a necessity made it no less painful. Numb after several hours and hundreds of times of playing her part over giving the same friendly smiles, knowing brow lifts, and courteous nods she was becoming quite certain that a placard sending the same calculated messages would better serve the all:
Everything is fine here.
It’s really just business as usual.
The Star Children are certainly not accelerating out of control on our long overdue collision with oblivion…
‘Peace Gaia, it’s not all that bad…’ The Mother of All heard her inner Riah’s voice keep her in check.
And the voice was right. Gaia could tell by the reassured looks each and everyone of her people returned to her that these messages were still the ones, after almost two billion standard galactic years, that they all still needed to hear. Moreover, she couldn’t blame her people for their continued anxiousness… The Star Children had lost both their home and their main Karmic purpose via her very first actions as their Mother. If the doubt that the still had couldn’t even be dispelled by standing on a Creaturix’s neo zoi ready to burst into full bloom, and they needed her to hold their hands and pinch them so that they new it was really real…She would do it. It actually made her feel good that her children still needed her to be strong for them.
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But before that continued, she need to take ‘a royal moment’ and make sure the next smile she forced on her face wasn’t that of a hungry mountain lion about to devour its helpless young. So, the Mother of All sat on the Sol Thone’s hard seat and took one letting her shoulders sag in the stiff white himation draped over her in its thick folds. The Star Children’s formal robe of court, it was slightly more restrictive than version that her mortal children from Romulous and Remus had made with their advanced togas…but, Meh, tradition was tradition.
With one hand she rubbed both eyes, with the other both temples as she absorbed the feelings of warmth and happiness that the ever-present Star Child grove tenders emitted into the gardens and fields all around her. Sighing with content she admitted that she really had no room to complain. The tenders were doing the real work here. They provided the care necessary to guarantee that each of the protostar’s precious fractal plasma outgrowths received the necessary nurturing to foster them into life preserving solar fronds. The fractals of a fully fledged Star of The Creaturix would bless their iteration with an influx of etheric energy and vital dark matter mass needed to prevent the iteration’s ultimate degradation via irreversible expansion. The Creaturix’s rebirth did nothing short of pull their universe back from its current cliffside view promising point-of-no-return-expansion cascading into unstoppable entropic diffusion. A fate that awaited any iteration, if, for whatever reason, the Stelate Creaturix at the center of it was lost. The very reality that had kept Gaia up more nights than not since Riah had blackmailed her from beyond the grave into holding off Zelviz with their Creaturix’s detonation. And it is not just us! She reminded herself for the millionth time. The Creaturix was the largest nexus link between all of the life bearing iterations. Its destruction had promised that this same fate awaited all the iterations of their cuboid. Likely even to several of the cuboids surrounding that!
Not a reality anyone wanted to face… And maybe one we don’t have to… Maybe…With this resurgence of the Creaturix we have all been given a second chance. One I am grabbing with both hands as long as I am able. Nothing is going to stop me from its realization. Nothing!
Reestablishing the Creaturix was the reason for all. Remembering that did make it easier to renew her patience and carry on several hundred more sessions of her forced-march meet and greet. After all, this was only the first of the Creaturix’s neo zoi. When it was ignited, she would need all of the Star Child populace on her side to foster the remaining billions of stars ready to light wouldn’t she?
Legacy or not, Gaia’s Olympian Clan’s renewed claim to the Sol Throne would ultimately fail. At least it would without the renewed sanction of the population and their dedication of the needed manpower and resources to maintain the life blazing neo zois. Unfortunately, things weren’t as simple as they had been back in Riah’s day. No. The social structure and power dynamics of the Star Children’s civilization had, of necessity, drastically changed in the time since their diaspora.
Before Zelviz, the Star Children's governing authority had been consolidated in a ruling monarchy under an all-powerful Matron. That leader had led a group of karmically-oath-bound vassal clans composed of quasi-immortal and, thus, undying members for as long as anyone could remember. After the destruction of the Creaturix, necessity had forced the surviving Star Children to kin into entirely new social organizational clusters.
It was true that several of the ancient clans still existed. For starters there was her clan, the Olympians. They were joined by the Asir and Vanir (now united as the Norse), the ancient Houses of Hindi, and Ra, along with the Aztecs, and Sumarians, still existed. All groups that Riah had dealt with on a daily basis. However, these mega families were no longer the only groups of consequence among the Star Children. New kinship groups had emerged either from the unification of previously decimated clans or completely new familial units founded through the birth of an entirely novel base of offspring. On top of this, there was a significant percentage that had remained splintered into small groups, numbering less than a few score each. And none of these new affiliations were obligated to follow any of the oaths of their ancestral bloodlines. But she needed all of them.
There was even a small contingent of newly partured Star Children demanding self-rule from what they called a ‘failed and overly maternalistic regime.’ Her descendant, Prometheus, was its loudest advocate… Clearly, the problematic upstart hadn’t learned the lesson Gaia’s grandson Zeus had been instructed to teach him when the youth had first come up with these nonsensical ideas. Gaia rubbed her temples deeper and sighed. You would think having your regrown liver eaten daily for a thousand standard rotations would stick with you…
Regardless, Gaia would have to deal with these lesser problems later. Right now her most important duties were to re-establish the unquestioned leadership of the Star Children and lay dominant claim to the reforming Creaturix. All of these groups need to be brought into her fold with new oaths of fealty to firmly establish their loyalties. And she would have to do it the old fashioned way. With strength, the power of successful leadership, and most importantly currying their favor with violent consensual combat. The Mother of the Earth had to admit that her human descendants from Romulus and Remus had been right on that score too. Nothing brought spirit beings into an accepting frame of mind like watching the certain and impending doom of others. As such, the games set to begin later today would bring the unassociated happily under her banner. Cronos and his five brother and sisters were a shoe-in—
Gaia’s thoughts were interrupted by a muted concaphony of shouts and pulses of anxiety throughout the gardens as the cue outside her door seemed to flee in all directions. A guard from outside deactivated the security wards and ran through the new rectangular opening in the static grey shield stretching between the Corinthian columns. Its ward immediately snapped back into place even before the pair of guards stationed on the throne room side turned toward the commotion. The entering soldier ran to Machitis and a short series of fierce whispering preceded a single barked command of Machitis’,
“Offensive Phalanx form up!”
The three guards formed a battle line, Dorys braced forward as if they expected a herd of charging photoderms to stampede upon them any micro. The enforcer stood directly in front of Gaia, legs spread in a wide based, left foot forward stance. His quad pronged short spear gripped firmly in both gauntleted fists.
