ARC OF THE IMMORTALS/ Book 1

Pursuit: 15 / In The Wake of Jac’s Death

Recap: After meeting with the Sisterhood millions of years in the past Touzdae returns to the almost present in search of the Mu. Meanwhile…

Recap (continued): …Jac and Crul Bahj have died at the hand of Pursuer-Jac by a fall or pushed into a fusion generator.

[traumatic flashbacks, violence, death]

P-Jac begins talking to himself in a low mumble and then audible words:

“This place seems so familiar. My Fa-Ma took me here, but I can’t remember if it was family owned and occupied or a world treasure from a bygone era.” He strolled through the grounds to a small courtyard where there was one chair and a small table.

“A servant should bring me some hot gren velvet tea,” he said. A stately gentleman appeared with a pitcher of hot tea, a cup, and a saucer.

“Hot tea, Master Kritos?”

“Yes, thank you.” P-Jac sips the tea.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

Touzdae arrived three weeks before she left. The search for the Mu had been challenging. The Sisterhood gave her a hologram of the ship with her own escape craft “drawn” in. The ship was nearly as four times as big as the Corvallis Space Station where they first encountered Pursuer.

“I really wanted to get back, mission done, on the same day that I left,” Touzdae said. It was twelve hours before she left. The Mu appeared on the long-range sensors. When she jumped the craft the Mu had left. Their jump-tube was dissipating. She set the controls and jumped inside their jump-tube.

P-Jac set down the empty cup. Toiletry, he thought as the need arose. Blink he was in a facility. Stepping out he mused aloud, “I would like to fight Jac at La Maz during the collapse.

Blink, he was on Gata landing with gossamer wings into La Maz. The ground quivered. Columns fell, and clouds of dust rose. The ground began to fall apart underfoot. “Stop, halt, freeze,” P-Jac said. He stopped. The surrounding area halted, columns stopped in mid-air and the ground froze.

Touzdae saw the Mu exiting the jump-tube. She folded space and jumped to an obscure empty area of one of the two tubular hangers when it happened. She was in the process of cloaking the ship. Jac fell into the fusion generator on top of Crul Bahj and died.

A barrage of images and sound flew at her. She raised her hands and arms over her head. Her inner self frozen inside her body at the core of her essence and she whispered:

“The Well of Souls.” The pain of loss was unbearable. Her being-body-and-soul jumped to a distant past.

“I don’t understand, Touzdae, how you could have done such a thing,” her Ma-Fa entered the foyer of the sleeping alcoves.

“What Mafa?”

“I thought you were in love with Ben?” she was wild with a fury fueled by suppressed rage.

“I am, I was. Something happened when I met Jac Kritos. That meeting transformed my world.”

“I have heard rumors about him,” she said almost as a secret.

“What? You must tell me,” Touzdae implored her.

“Rumors are not good karma. It was a mark again me to have even uttered the word.” She paused, straightened her clothing, and continued, “What of Ben? Besides the loss of his Fa-Ma, I thought you loved him deeply?”

“I do. Maybe. I do not know if I love him as I once did. And there’s Jac.”

“Now, are you to tell me you love Jac more deeply than Ben?”

“I don’t know. That’s why I — ” Her Ma-Fa shushed her.

“Do not speak of such blasphemy in our home or anywhere.”

“Fa-Ma, your husband’s Ancestor times two past Fa-Ma did create one to help him decide,” Touzdae wailed.

The Well of Souls

Touzdae’s flashback skipped forward to the small craft descending deep into the well. Pieces of metal collided the craft. She was climbing into the half-life sarcophagus when she returned to the J-NezTouz.

Silence.

The Mission

“What was that?” she asked rhetorically. “Nez, are you here?” No response.

I must go on about my mission. She changed her appearance to an old crone using the machine. The part of the machine that blurred her face she stowed within the metal exosuit.

She re-positioned the wooden figurines from the inside transdimensional chamber. It was as Jac had done while the transdimensional space was in the hotel room in the Casa Noir. She had worn them in her clothing as protection in leaving the ship proper. As she put two in the metallic exosuit. One in the front of her helmet and one near the base of the pants of the suit.

She stepped into the airlock.

P-Jac was in awe of what he had done. Between the amazement of his own grandeur, his thoughts were of his most recent opponent Jac. He longed to face him for a proper death with pain and suffering.

The airlock closed behind her and she swam through the cloak. She winced in pain as she passed through it. Once through she activated her jet-pack.

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Thank you for joining me in the adventures that span lifetimes and worlds. (If you do NOT wish to be tagged, let me know, and I’ll tag you not):

Barbara Murray | K. Pearson Bradley | René Beauchemin | Dougfrombk | Rebecca Romanelli | Joseph Lieungh | Adam Mackay | Dr. Preeti Singh | Pene Hodge | Ravyne Hawke | Dr Mehmet Yildiz | Kris Bedenian | Alberto García 🚀🚀🚀 | Blaine Coleman | Lee David Tyrrell | DL Nemeril | David Price | Rip Parker | Annelise Lords | Libby Shively McAvoy | Alan Lew