The Spatial Shard
Prologue: Beginning In The Middle

“Firvah is injured!” Anehta proclaimed as Staydenn’s body finally came to a halt. He moaned as softly as he could, not wanting to make a sound at all. But the momentum the blast had generated was great and the wall so very steadfast in its task to remain standing; something had to give. It started with his body and stopped with his ability to remain silent. “I can do nothing for him while the restraint remains on his person,” she continued. “It must be removed.”

“It won’t be removed,” Firvah countered as he ran to the archway, not giving any sign the wound the blast had given him had impacted his ability to move quickly.

Warriors! How they confounded Staydenn in their ability to be more than Atlantean. Like so many of the weapons used by their keepers, the grenade had featured a component beyond a simple explosive. The one that had injured Firvah possessed an incendiary additive. The large fighter had put his body between the blast and Staydenn, his side catching on fire before his rolling smothered the flames. The fabric of their prisoner uniforms (dyed an abysmal mixture of orange and yellow shades) had finally served as more than simply a means to categorize the proud people of Atlantis. But Staydenn could see Firvah favored his right side for all of three strides. As he took his perch at the archway, he gave no sign he had been injured at all.

Proudly wearing the symbol of his ilk on the right side of his face, the ebon-hued warrior beamed a bright smile as his gray eyes scoured The Yards. During the beginning of their day, The Yards were given to the Atlanteans so they could exercise their contemplations. Many meditated. Others, like Firvah, exercised by performing practiced combat maneuvers, only painstakingly slow. They called it a saltatorial and while Firvah was not one of the better participants, his errors were never addressed, let alone corrected. His long, thin black hair blew in the breeze when it was not in a tightly wound ponytail.

“The Rotai have taken the bait!” Firvah declared, smiling at Staydenn. They were halfway to a successful mission and leagues beyond where Staydenn had thought they would reach. “They are nowhere to be seen. You can begin your spell.”

“If the stone is there,” Staydenn added as he readied himself for another short sprint. He was not given to physical measures, but he was no stranger to them either. “If not, this has all been for nothing!”

“Bah!” Firvah barked as he stepped out into the open. “Nothing an Atlantean does is for nothing, boy! But I would not expect your kind to understand such things. Now move!” Both Atlanteans moved out into the abandoned field and as they approached the center, Staydenn dropped to his knees and slid to a stop. Firvah continued for another three strides and stopped, looking around for an opponent or some other obstacle to his freedom. He had never been this close, but he was not about to let that convince him that anything was promised.

“Boy?!” Staydenn thought as he feverishly dug deep into the dirt with his bare hands. Firvah was 600 years his senior… that hardly made him an Elder, but that would be a subject for argumentation at a later date.

Staydenn muffled his cry of pain when his fingers struck the object he sought. Stuffing his uninjured hand into his mouth and biting down, Staydenn looked at his index and middle fingers and could see they were both broken.

“I must mend them!” he thought as he focused his mind and quickly locked out the pain. Perhaps Staydenn should not have been so amazed with Warriors after all. Almost instantly he was not showing any signs that he favored his injured hand.

“Fool!” Firvah softly barked as his fists clenched tight. “What are you doing?!” But it was too late. Staydenn, the promising young apprentice, had already summoned the energies necessary to complete the incantation. How many times had he cast a spell while under the watchful eye of the Rotai? It had become second nature to him. But all of those spells had also been under the watchful eye of his masters who had created a means of masking the sensors of the Rotai. None of those veils existed outside of the cell block, and without them he had been detected.

The Rotai could wield every energy form under the stars and did so with masterful precision and incredible magnitudes. They had managed to best the Atlanteans in every field of science, save one: magic! Despite their best efforts, magic was not to be theirs and the Rotai set themselves on the mission to ensure no one else would wield what they could not. They had devices that could counter magic and even detect magic, for the most part. Staydenn’s mending spell tripped many of the sensors and raised alarms throughout the facility.

“Give me Anehta!” Firvah’s deep voice boomed and Staydenn, knowing he might have just foiled their attempt to be free, quickly followed the order, reaching into his shirt to produce his creation. Staydenn knew the word ‘his’ was, at best, misapplied, to say nothing of the word that followed it. So many minds and talents had gone into her conception; nearly three centuries of searching and seeking, crafting and caring, guessing and guiding! The existence of a Shard was… more than Staydenn’s mind could truly fathom. He had wanted to call her Hope but she had named herself Anehta, and in retrospect that was probably for the best.

A simple grasp was all the Star Foe member needed, and the soft gray axe tattoo on his face burned a bright sky blue. Staydenn could hear the snap of the restraint Atlanteans were forced to wear on their wrists. Firvah, for a time at least, was a free man. The young scholar looked at his own wrist briefly. His restraint had long since been compromised. It maintained enough functionality to appear to be operating, but it had no power over Staydenn. But then again, he was a Scholar and his Abedecaries had seen to his holding apparatus when he started his studies almost 300 years ago. Firvah was a Warrior, a different breed of Atlantean and a different clan as well.

Firvah’s gray eyes locked on the far side of the field and he tossed Anehta back to Staydenn.

“Fathers forgive me!” Staydenn cried as searchlights beamed down on the two Atlanteans.

“You’d better hope you live to receive my forgiveness!” Firvah barked as he turned his left shoulder to where he was looking, where he was feeling. “Get on with the door, child!”

“But they’re coming!”

“A strong point of debate,” Firvah admitted. “But one you will not be allowed to conclude should they arrive and you are still sitting there gawking at me!” Like most Warriors, Firvah’s gift for figurative speech was severely limited. However, it made understanding him much simpler. Staydenn turned his attentions on the feat Firvah required of him and he had not yet returned to a state of true focus when he heard the apertures open. The Rotai were quick to answer alarms triggered by the detection of magic!

“Keep going, boy!” Firvah whispered as he looked at the four Rotai stepping through the apertures. Three sentries and one Custodian; a small sliver of good fortune now shined on them. Firvah had expected a much more powerful contingent. Perhaps the ruse the Elders had spoken of earlier was more than a mere distraction – typical Elder subterfuge: see to it those who need to know little are given far less than that amount of information. “We still have a chance here.”

“We have more than that!” Staydenn declared as he took hold of the buried stone and Anehta, focusing on the apertures the Rotai had come through.

“A door is a door,” Staydenn thought as he placed the buried stone on top of Anehta. She quickly absorbed the offering; a soft green light shone from her blue edges. “And there are four here now.” Staydenn extended his touch into each of the four apertures and seized their power as well as their effect to minimalize the difference between time and space. The less magic would have to do, the better. Combining the four into one was simple; since they were made by machines, they shared the same construction matrix. Staydenn then brought the aperture to his side of The Yards and thrust his will and energies upon the aperture. While this side of the aperture was going to remain a fixed point, the other side had to change. After all, he did not need to go to the barracks of the Rotai; Staydenn needed to go home!

The Custodian slowly walked toward Firvah, ready to bring a quick end to this so-called escape attempt. He could see the Warrior markings on the Atlantean’s face, but he was not impressed. It would take more than markings to defeat a Custodian. Three strides short of engaging, he felt something; a presence. It was a presence he had been trained to perceive, but one he had never expected to experience first-hand. Z’Gal’For was in close proximity to a Shard!

He remembered how he had been frustrated with the training schedules and so much of his personal time had been taken up in the pursuit of a legend. Z’Gal’For’s estimation of his superiors was quickly changing. He quickly altered his approach course, but the Atlantean Warrior wished to delay him. The walls were covered with the glare of the light coming off his armor. But the lead guard was not about to let his emotional state dictate his actions. He pointed at the marked man and waited for the Sentries to make their attack.

“This one is too smart for his own good!” Firvah thought, taking a step back as the three Sentries moved toward him. “But we’ve come too far… too damn far!!!” Firvah’s hands opened, his fingers at first stretched wide from his hands as he took a hard step forward. His hands relaxed as he brought them up, his left hand in front of his chest, the fingertips of his right hand equal to his tightening jaw. His lips parted and a slow, intentionally loud exhale escaped his mouth. His gray eyes flared but his eyelids had not moved; intensity had overwhelmed them! The Rotai were fairly large, but they had mere centimeters of height on Firvah, five at the most. It could have been twenty – it would not have mattered.

The first Sentry was too new to the job to be here this evening. It was clear he had had no exposure to the Atlantean Race. He reached to his side and produced a restraint to replace the one Firvah had removed.

“Do not force us to hurt you!” he said in a very clear and commanding tone. Firvah made no verbal reply. The way of the Star Foe rarely lay within verbiage. The Atlantean flashed a smile that held no elation and the Sentry was ignorant of its meaning.

Firvah lunged forward, his smile becoming a fearsome snarl, and the only word that could be read in his eyes was death! He gave a loud battle cry and sent his left hand back, forming it for a clawing attack.

The center Sentry was frozen where he stood. He had never seen such an expression and Firvah’s war cry shot straight to his center and locked his body off from his mind… not that the Sentry was capable of logical thought at the moment either. The Sentry to Firvah’s left burst into action, hoping to avoid the final neutralization of a Rotai Guard. It was exactly the sort of maneuver for which Firvah was looking.

The powerfully built Atlantean surged forward and with his right hand he took hold of the center Sentry’s hand, the one holding a restraint. A quick twist and the new restraint, that had been so quick to come to the center Sentry’s assistance, fastened around the Rotai’s wrist. The new Sentry’s thumb had also been pinned under the restraint and he could not free himself. Firvah snatched his hand back before the device could activate and both guards cried out as they were shocked by the restraint.

The clawing hand quickly opened up further and Firvah barely smacked a thrust meant for his neck. The last Sentry had drawn his blade and had abandoned the hope of restraining the Atlantean Warrior. Firvah snorted as he gave ground, taking a step back. The world went blurry to Firvah for a moment. The Sentry had taken the force of the blocking maneuver and spun, kicking Firvah in the face as he did. This guard had faced an Atlantean before and in the moment that Firvah took to blink, trying to clear his head, the Sentry came forward with another bladed attack and the Star Foe was not in a place to mount a strong defense.

When Staydenn took hold of Anehta, he allowed his heart to hope. He had expected to expend so much more energy on the aperture with all of the blocks the Rotai had against magic of such magnitude. Time and Space alterations were among the most difficult. But the Rotai themselves had provided the means to redefine Space – he only needed to link to the streams of Time, and they were not too difficult to find. They had been created so long ago, just after Staydenn had entered his time of development – his adolescence, before the Atlanteans had been imprisoned. But that was another story for another time. He had an opportunity to correct a tragic crime of circumstance; an opportunity to free his people!

“Put down the Shard and I will let you live, Atlantean,” the Custodian said softly. Staydenn could hear the capacitors of his keeper’s armor ready to discharge their energies.

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