The dark season had fallen hard and heavy on the fertile belt, about a week earlier than it usually did, though that was not entirely unheard of. Sometimes the fiery mother below them ran a little hotter usual and so needed to let of a little steam earlier than was expected.

The first ashfall of the season had not been a surprise.

They had seen the increased activity in the quieting of nearby hot springs. For many years their ancestors had always kept close watch on those hot springs as a gage to determine the fanciful moods of the fiery mountain chain. The livelier the springs the quieter the mountains. And usually, the quieting of the springs meant greater activity in the mountains, and so by the time the ash began to fall in delicate little flakes from the sky, Hijan had tidied up her little hut on the outer edge of the village, and had more than a month's worth of coiltree berries dried and stored in the little catch in the dirt under her house.

Of course a month was hardly enough food to get her through the dark season, but that's where the communal cathedral stores would come in.

She wasn't worried.

As the oldest Drev in the clan, she held a certain place of honor that Even the Magnate and the Sentinel were wary of questioning.

She would be fed.

Hijan sat on the moss of her bed and listened to the quiet rustle f ash against the stone that made up the outer wall of her house. Moss curtains had been hung over any ventilation that might have been used during the light season. It was quiet, and in these moments she couldn't help but miss the company of her long dead battle partner, bless his spirit, and the path before him in the afterlife. A more beautiful warrior there had never been, and a more beautiful warrior there would never be.

He had died when she was uncommonly young, though, then she had had Kits to take care of.

And with them grown and gone, some of them with their own families and some of them to the spirits like there father, she was left alone.

And had been for a long time.

Thinking on her loneliness, she missed the strange little alien she had adopted into her home, the predatory creature with forward facing eyes, squishy skin, and a heart like any Drev warrior, a creature that she had named gift in their own tongue as he had been a gift to her during a time of greater loneliness.

It wasn't so bad these days, only an occasional pang here and there.

Hijan had lived a long life, and planned to live an even longer one if the spirits permitted, so the occasional melancholy was to be expected.

What she didn't expect, of course, was to be roused from her sleep.

She jolted upright some time after dark, her heart pounding and her body gone cold.

For a moment she thought that maybe the end had finally come and the spirits were here to take her, but even as she sat, her heart continued to beat and her breath came easy.

No

She wasn't dying.

But something still felt off.

It was a feeling on the air, chilled and..... cold and infused with a sense of meline unease that made her sure that something was lurking behind her in the shadows, but when she turned there was nothing there.

As her brain adjusted to the dark, she squinted.

Drev vision was not as good as human vision in the dark, but her color receptors were far more sensitive.

She saw the red glow through the crack under her door. It was so faint that, at first, she thought she was seeing things, but could hardly dismiss it, and it wasn't the fire of the mountains either, she knew that color: A flickering red orange, and this.... This was different.

Himjan stood slowly, stretching out her old muscles, which had gone stiff with inactivity, and reached for her armor, slipping it on and grabbing her spear before quietly opening the door. The diffused red light was hard to pinpoint in the defused smoke of the dark season.

The ash fall had stopped some time ago, leaving a light dusting of the stuff upon the ground at her feet, a clear grey carpet that was undisturbed by footprints.

She took another step forward leaving the first mark upon the silent, darkened world turning her head this way and that in search of the red light's true source.

She found nothing, though her sense of unease grew stronger.

With a welling dread in her chest, Hijan pushed further into the village until she came to the large house at it's center. Hijan was not stupid, and if she was going to find out what this was, she was going to need backup.

Backup came in the form of her oldest son, the clan sentinel.

It doesn't take him long before the door opens and he peers out at her a spear I none hand. It hasn't taken him long to shrug off his tiredness, and he looks at her with his head cocked in a question. His question doesn't need to be answered by her as his eyes fall on the strange red glow.

He nods once and allows her inside.

The Kits are still sleeping, but his battle partner is sitting up on one of her elbows in confusion.

He nods to her, communicating silently as she stands.

Together they pull on their armor.

He would never go anywhere without his battle partner, and Hijan is grateful for the two of them as they leave the kits sleeping peacefully I the moss within the house, stepping out into the smoky night, their feet silent against the ash as they move through town.

Their unease and dread begins to mount as they head towards the source of the defused red light.

It isn't very far away from the village, and as they get closer the light grows stronger. The smoke parts as their dread reaches a crescendo.

Hijan raises her spear ready to....

She pauses

The two others flank her from either side as they stare down into the small divot in the land, where the pulsing white bone juts from the ground, glowing a dim red and producing a soft red smoke which falls to the ground, heavier than the regular smoke, to fill the divot like water might collect at the bottom of a bason.

Hijan is repelled by it, and she can tell by the shifting at her back that she is not the only one.

They stand there for a long moment before, behind her, her son moves.

Soemthing flies through the air, and the light is snuffed out with a soft thud and crunch, as the rock is dropped atop the glowing, pulsing thing.

Hijan turns to look at her son, who is holding another rock in his other hand.

A human had taught him how to do that, and today it has served him well.

Whatever that thing was, it was not of this place.

The three of them exchanged looks.

There was only one person they could call.

***

The crystal city was dark when they finally arrived.

Lord Celex sat quietly and stately at the back of the shuttle while his son spoke quietly with the guards at the front.

Lord Celex was still not feeling his best, but his hair had grown back, and he was at least feeling well enough to return to his more stately duties.

As long as he avoided any duels for now, he would probably be ok.

As per usual he had Adam Vir, Dr, Krill and their other human friends to thank for his recovery. Most especially Adam's brood mate Thomas, who would be the first human allowed open invitation to the Celex home world, which even Adam had not been granted.

Thomas was a good man and had helped him to partially overcome his addiction, while away, though he still felt the tug and call of adrenaline in his body even as he sat there. Thomas was his "Sponsor" or so he had said. He was going to help Lord Celex avoid the call of that tantalizing drug.

He tried to be dismissive of Thomas and his help, but deep down he was grateful.

He was.... Frightened.... Of what the drug had been able to do to him, though he would never have admitted that.

He thought it had made him strong, but really it had made him weak. Someone had been able to show up in his throne room, threaten him, and use the drug to control him. The thought of such actions made him sick with himself, and he tried not to think about them. He would have doomed the entire galaxy to ruin all for one more taste of it.

It was the greatest shame and dishonor he could imagine, and there were plenty of things that he considered shameful.

The fact that his son still supported his rule was a miracle unto itself.

Lord Celex had been through detox treatments and surgeries to repair his damaged heart more times than one over the past few months, and his son had been there for all of it. By all rights the younger Celzex should have challenged him to a duel and taken the throne outright.

It would have been easy.

He could have done it without so much as straining himself in the state the emperor had found himself in.

But he had refused.

Refused because if he was going to win the throne, it was going to be in a fair fight.

Lord Celex had never been so proud of his son, for his honor and for his true dedication to their ideals. He had also never been so ashamed of himself, though those thoughts were thoughts he attempted to keep to himself at all costs.

The shuttle landed outside the palace, and a set of guards showed up to escort them inside.

It was upon seeing these group of guards that lord Celex knew that something was wrong.

These guards had been chosen carefully from the ranks of those who had attempted to duel him in the past. While they had failed to his superior fighting prowess, he had taken them on as bodyguards, which was a position second or third only to the emperor himself. To allow them to guard him was the highest compliment on their fighting prowess.

And these Celzex were the greatest warriors in the kingdom, possessing more willpower than ten and iron constitutions.

It was with this in mind that Lord Celex noticed soemthing was wrong.

Fidgeting nervous eyes, shuffling feet that would not stay still, and glances exchanged unconsciously between each other.

He paused before them refusing to go any further until he figured out what was going on.

He squared himself and puffed out the fur on his back to make himself look bigger. Having lost most of his fur from illness and the surgeries over the past month or so, he had been keenly aware of how small he really was.

To have his fur back was a relief in more ways than one.

"Speak." He ordered the closest man.

The Celex looked back at the others rather nervously.

"I...."

"I can see you fidgeting from a mile away, which tells me either you have banded together to kill me and are just trying to figure out when to do it, or soemthing has gone wrong, and you are trying to figure out how to phrase it to me."

The group looked between each other with the same expression of unease, along with a hit of surprise at his perceptiveness.

They did not seem insulted by the insinuation that they might band together and try to kill their leader. It had happened before and was not entirely unheard of. The last time it did happen, however, Lord Celex had handily dealt with at least six of them. Luckily for them this had been while he was on adrenaline.

The impression he had left was not likely to encourage anyone else to action in the coming months.

"No, no not the former, my lord." Said the captain of the guard, "But there is soemthing strange.... Going on in the palace, specifically in the throne room."

He trailed off and lord Celex's eyes narrowed.

"And what might that be."

The group of them shuffled their feet and looked away. The captain of the guard cleared his throat, "I am.... Well we aren't entirely sure my lord.... It.... none of us have gone in to look."

"What do you mean none of you have gone in to look."

The entire group of them lowered their heads in shame at his derision.

He marched past them and into the palace proper, comforted by the cool crystal and marble walls as he hurried down the corridor.

He understood almost as soon as he stepped inside.

The palace was.... Wrong.

He could feel it from the tips of his toes, right into the points of his piggy little ears.

There was a.... presence, on the air that wasn't quite right; like someone had tossed a heavy shroud over the palace. Despite glittering walls and golden light leaking down from above bathing the hallways in glorious golden light, it still managed to feel dark, or muted perhaps, like color and vibrancy was slowly being drained through a civ.

Guards walked the hallways in various stages of unease, their eyes wide and maddened by the presence that had taken over the palace.

Slowly the presence of guards thinned away, until no one walked the halls but him, his son, and the steadfast group of guards that trailed nervously behind them.

The feeling was growing worse.

He could see why the guards were not patrolling this section of the palace, but he remained as stiff and as proper as ever, not allowing a single ounce of his own unease to slip through. He had already allowed his weakness to overcome him once, he was not about to allow it again.

The group paused only momentarily outside the wide double doors, but for fear his hesitation might be taken as a sign of cowardice, he didn't allow it to last long, pushing the massive double doors open with a soft break, making no sound as they swung inward.

As they did the entire guard stepped back with a gasp of horror as a low red mist poured out into the hallway, likely having accumulated at the doors, lapping hungrily to be let out.

Lord Celex backed away as well, but for a different reason.

The mist was low to the floor, and so were they.

He knew what this was.

"Respirators!" He ordered.

The group retreated down the hallway until the red mist had dissipated a little more, and one of the soldiers ran off, only to return a few moments later with the aforementioned respirators. Lord Celex put his on and returned to the hallway wading through the low red mist that was slowly beginning to defuse throughout the palace.

His breathing was loud in his ears as he walked through the open doors.

The floor was stained with grime, bones littered the floor where the bodies had fallen, his eyes scanning around the room.

No one had been in here to clean up, since he had left more than a few months ago, so he could only assume that whatever it was, had been here for a while.

He stepped past a pile of bones and lifted his head towards the end of the room where his throne sat, and froze in surprise.

Red light pulsed around the seat, and he craned his neck back in shock at the growth of pale white bone clutched around the throne like a set of knuckles holding the seat of the Celex empire in a tight embrace.

All his fur stood on end as he stared at it, the malevolent presence that had infected the heart of his kingdom like a virus.

"Destroy it." He ordered

None of his men moved.

"I said DESTROY IT!"

This time they hurried to do their bidding and he turned to look at his son, "Call the Admiral..... I think we both know that this has something to do with.

"The Eden project." Lord Avex muttered

Lord Celex nodded in agreement.