Poison mist. It drifted in his mind's eye, a russet haze dispersing on a breeze that might never stir.

That was the nature of prophecy. All possibility, no certainty.

But it felt real. The sweaty fear. The burn of his throat swelling, closing, before all he could taste was blood.

Shen fought the need to wrench loose his ceremonial robe's high collar as Zealot Lucent, his aged attendant, buttoned the stiff, embroidered silk. To react to the flickering realities the One Symbiont fed his visual cortex was to invite interrogation. In the gilded, mosaic halls of the Heavenly Observatory, every prophecy the microscopic brain worm revealed to him had to be documented, examined, debated ... then interpreted to mean whatever served the Order of Enlightenment best.

Swallowing, loosening his windpipe, Shen stared across the flowing white silk and gold tiles of his chambers. He didn't want to think about how his death might serve anyone, especially the Order. He'd barely lived. Eighteen years of being bathed, dressed, and watched by old men didn't count as a life. He'd seen enough in the symbiont's visions to know there was more—a trillion worlds; myriad life forms; millions of breathless moments, bright and painful.

Pale hair—a whirl. The flash of two-tone hazel eyes and unbalanced dimples.

His heart jolted. Her. Again. That smile, witnessed a thousand times since childhood. But the alien worm in his head fed him the image more frequently now. Daily, hourly, and with far more unsettling visions in its wake. Ones that tightened his chest and, uncomfortably, the tailored fit of his pants; a kaleidoscope of possibilities he was in no way ready to face, but prayed he someday would.

It wasn't an assassin's toxic trap that killed his air now, but slim fingers and soft lips.

Lucent's phlegmy chuckle scattered the images, a lumbering mutt amongst doves. "You're in fine health on this most auspicious birthday Goobishen Prime. The Prophet Mothers will gladly welcome you into their chambers after the banquet. Such a fine young body for them to worship."

Shen shuddered, barely resisting the urge to shake off the man's hands. Just the thought of visiting the Order's faceless, cloaked breeders terminated the enthusiasm his body had for being touched. While scrupulous criteria were applied to a concubine's selection, a willingness to serve was not among them. Not since the Order replaced the secular government.

Shen's stomach rolled. At eighteen, he now faced the duty of bringing the next Prime Prophet into existence.

A wrinkled face. Tiny fists tight with temper...

Fire. A cloth-wrapped bundle blackening, turning to ash.

Shen felt his chest seize—grief for a child he was yet to father. A child he'd never know whatever future unfolded.

He closed his eyes, prayed that tiny, spirited possibility might find another path to existence, then sent the image back into the future's shifting haze.

"Goobishen?" His name on Lucent's lips cut deep that moment. Goobishen: son of Goobi, the First Prime Prophet. The moniker of every Prime for over three hundred years. The First had predicted the carriers of the symbiont would never be daughters.

And the Order ensured his prophetic accuracy.

Shen opened his eyes, queasy intuition telling him his daughter's would've been the same colour, a shade the Order's marketing team described as "crystalline green, pure as still lake waters".

Nothing felt still inside him that moment.

He turned, met Lucent's querying look, pretended not to see the man's age-spotted hand fall to the recorder clipped to his robes, ever ready for 'enlightenment'.

"Might I request a moment of reflection before the ceremony?" Shen forced the enigmatic smile Marketing had him practise. "Perhaps run Zealot HopeLight through his duties to the High Interpreter one last time so there's no—" he allowed the smile to chill "—possibility for error."

Lucent's eyes rounded. Gnarled fingers dropped from the device supplied to record all Prime visions—except those that might reflect poorly on the recorder. "Oh, yes, yes." A frantic bob of a bald scalp, then the shuffle of slippers in full retreat. "Thank you for your wonderous foresight, Prime. Your wisdom is great."

The zealot vanished through the curtains to the attendants' quarters.

Shen walked to his chamber's vast window, taken from the viewdeck of the First Prime's colony ship. Its presence in a ground building was a monument to the Order's influence and armed Donations team.

As were the festivities unfolding below.

Giant screens broadcast shimmering imagery of sunlight. Thousands of banners rippled, stamped with the Order's trademarked Golden Sun. Rows and rows of seats awaited guests—those able to pay the ticket price. Beyond them, a large crowd milled around merchandise and fast-food stalls: pilgrims dressed in the Order's colours. White for truth, purity of sight. Gold for the fire of possibility.

No expense was spared on a Prime's birthday. The pristine, tropical blue sky above Temple City already buzzed with dancing drones—surveillance units among them. Other festivities would be happening right across the planet of New Paradise, possibly the star system.

But not everyone would be celebrating.

Yellow smoke rising at the end of the promenade.

Crowd suppressant gas.

A vision swept away Shen's sight. Fire—silhouettes racing through smoke. The Heavenly Observatory alight, violence spilling over reflection pools, statues, and topiary. Rioters clashed with white-robed temple guards; fell under the debilitating blows of shock batons and rifles.

Not all fell.

A man in black tumbling into the chaos, features hidden in a coiled headscarf. As others dropped, he rolled to his feet untouched, sword drawn, its length arcing white with plasma. With terrifying precision, he took down his opponents until he reached the temple's main entrance and slipped inside.

Shen pressed his forehead against the window before him, certainty drilling into his bones. His fate lay on the edge of that man's blade or in the acidic mist of an assassin's trap.

Either way, he would be the last Prime.

A nagging urge to move.

Shen opened his eyes, recognising the intuitive push of the symbiont.

When it'd infected the First Prime on one of the planet's long, sweeping silica beaches, his fellow colonists had believed it a parasite. But the worm hadn't consumed its host; it'd guided the two-legged alien that'd arrived in its world, allowing the colonists to flourish.

Following the push to leave his chambers, Shen moved to the entrance; peered through the curtains screening it.

Two guards, their backs to him.

A trickle of fear burned his throat. If there was a parasite on Paradise, it was the Order. As they grew in strength, others suffered, including the creature they'd formed their faith business around.

A butterfly—shimmering iridescent blue.

Shen acknowledged his tiny companion's joke with a brief, nervous smile. The alien would never fly or drink from flowers, its lifecycle egg to micro-size worm then conversion to a far bigger, slime-coated worm that grazed on sea algae and dreamed of new and dying stars, nothing close to the appeal of a delicate terran butterfly.

But for that final metamorphosis to occur, his companion needed to reach the sea.

Shen eyed the guards, heart thudding. No Prime left the Heavenly Observatory. When they inevitably expressed an interest to...

No Prime had lived past twenty-five.

A crash—shattering glass at the end of the corridor—a server slipping on newly polished tiles.

Shen eased behind the distracted guards, into a service passage, before he was even aware of moving.

The symbiont. Its influence had grown through his nervous system over the years—puppet strings it could pull.

He knew better than to resist. Like a dancer following his partner's lead, he transformed suggestion into action, sidestepping into an alcove to avoid a rushing maid, flowing between billowing curtains into a stairwell used for fire drills.

Twenty flights to ground level.

A vaulted atrium awaited, themed on the planet's tropical biome: azure floor tiles; gilded pillars shaped like palm trees, fronds arching to form a dome. Servants and acolytes rushed every which way—a flurry of sandaled feet that came to an instant stop at the sound of a chime.

All dropped to their knees, pressed their foreheads to the floor.

Three figures in shimmering gold strode past, heading for the main elevators. The High Interpreter and his assistants on their way to escort their Prime.

Shen's heart thundered. They'd reach his chambers in only minutes.

Before bowed heads could lift, he stepped into the atrium, took the first corridor—the waterfall-screened entrance of the temple's bath house.

An armed man in white striding across damp stone pavers.

Shen ducked into an alcove piled with towels a second before reality matched the vision.

A guard marched past, ceremonial blade and stun pistol at his hip, blast armour gleaming gold under ice-white robes.

Shen had the man's pistol in hand and the trigger pulled before even registering the violent impulse.

As the unconscious man fell, disbelief rolled through Shen. Then nausea.

He was committed now.

But if his companion's goal was escape, why bring him here? There was no path out of the temple, just a maze of waterfalls and steaming purification pools.

Pulse hammering, he dragged the guard into a private changing room, managing the task with unsettling ease. Undressing, he realised how much he'd changed over the past year. Gone was the skinny youth. The arms he pulled free of embroidered silk had lean muscle. The hands that stripped the guard of armour and robes were still long boned, but no longer the "delicate instruments" Temple Marketing promoted.

A butterfly.

Shen grimaced as he snapped on the guard's armour. Yes, his alien friend was right. While his attention had been elsewhere, he'd taken the next step in his growth cycle.

Blood on damp stone.

Shen froze—then pulled on the guard's robes frantically. No, no. Maybe if he hurried—

"Check all private rooms and pools." A brisque command directly outside. The next instant—

The changing room's door swung open.

A blade in his fist—then in the man's throat. The senior guard fell, lay still, blood a widening stain on stone.

Shen's gut lurched. His hands shook. He hadn't wanted to kill; would've done anything to avoid it.

Anything but stay.

A tiny life turning to ash.

"Sir, the escapee—" Another guard barged in.

Shen greeted him with a stun bolt to the jugular; the next guard, a shoulder barged straight out the door, pitching him and the pair behind him into a shallow foot-wash pool.

Two guards still on their feet.

Shen sidestepped their charge; pivoted to discharge a stun bolt between one man's helmet and collar—straight into spinal nerves. He almost felt the jolt himself, the explosion of violence reverberating through his being, alien but familiar. Rolling clear of a barrage of stunner blasts from the man's partner, comprehension hit.

The symbiont had tapped into skills he was yet to acquire but, in a likely future, would.

A man in black, plasma-edged blade slicing through white robes and flesh.

Shen saw fire as he took down the other guard.

Some years from now, he would be the one to see the temple burn.

If he survived this fight.

The three guards he'd arse-ended into the footbath were up—weapons ready.

Shen tasted panic. Why had his companion led him into a battle he would not win?

A searing hot jolt. Hearts seizing.

Shen leapt clear of the footbath—just as the remaining guards jerked stiff ... fell.

He swung about; spotted a dark, robe-shrouded figure crouched at the water's edge, a stunner in each hand, fuse lights flashing. A Prophet Mother. Someone never allowed outside her chambers.

The guards' 'escapee'.

A girl with frightened, mismatched hazel eyes.

Shen sprinted for her, grabbed her hand, pulled her toward the unguarded overflow pipe the symbiont had shown him.

The young woman ran with him, fingers clenched around overloaded stunners, taut words heaving out between breaths—none of devotion, just a demand to know if he knew where the hell he was going.

His daughter's mother.

Acknowledgements, Copyright, and Challenge Details

This short story was written for the 'December 2021: The Future of Goobishen Prime' challenge. Challenge details: Write a story that fits the tile 'The Future of Goobishen Prime'.