She looks like an angel, he thought to himself before the woman turned her burning eyes upon him. An angel, a hysterical voice in his mind echoed as he lost control of his bladder, a blade of fear cutting through his stomach. An angel of death.
He tried to push himself back down the stairs, away from her, but it was far too late. One of the dancing bolts of lightning arced from her hands, vaporizing Riggs in the blink of an eye.
Feeling Shera-Khan motionless close beside her, Nicole shivered on the floor as a roaring tide of energy coursed through her body, as if she had suddenly become a human conduit for raw, pure power. And then she heard the voice that was not a voice, but was more like a blast of sound through her brain, a single thought exploding inside her skull. A curtain of fire swept through her veins, scorching her flesh. Agony. Ecstasy.
“My Children…”
Even from his distant vantage point, Thorella was nearly blinded and deafened by the forces that gripped the throne room. He watched as Riggs’s entire platoon was wiped out by what looked like nothing more complex, nothing less devastating, than lightning. He had no doubts that had he chosen to make the trek up those ancient stone steps, he, too, would now be dead.
But Thorella was a survivor, and always had been. “Marine One,” he called the command ship that was orbiting somewhere overhead, “we need an emergency evac down here now!”
“On our way, sir,” came the tinny reply.
“Move it,” Thorella snapped as he turned to head down the hall toward the landing bay.
But, as he did so, he saw out of the corner of his eye the ship as it passed over the dome, low, too low. Thorella was about to shout a warning when a bolt of lightning shot upward through the dome, reaching a blazing claw toward the ship. In a blinding flash the ship exploded, leaving nothing but burning fragments whirling away from an expanding cloud of gas as its remains streaked out of sight, leaving behind a trail of sooty smoke.
Then the lightning surged into the structure of the dome itself, the blinding veins of cyan working their way through the stone and crystal like water through a plant thirsting for water, leaving in their wake a shimmering fluorescence.
Thorella ran alone from the carnage behind him. He ran for the Golden Pearl.
Enya was deafened by the sudden silence. The thunder and lightning that had exploded all around her were gone. The gale force winds that had swept over the dais were still. The great dome was silent, as was the city beyond. The bombs had stopped falling. Her whole body was shivering with fear, her eyes tightly closed. Eustus lay unconscious in her arms. His breathing was ragged. Against her better judgment, she opened her eyes.
The Marines were gone. There was nothing left of them but a faint trace of burned plastic and the stench of scorched flesh. While the blue fire was also gone, the throne room still glowed with eerie light that highlighted the scene of devastation that was the once pristine dais.
Nearby, Braddock’s lifeless body lay entombed by the slab of crystal that had fallen from above. Next to him Nicole and Shera-Khan lay equally still. Enya was suddenly afraid, afraid that she was alone with whatever power now haunted this place.
It was then that a phantom stepped from the smoke that still clung to the dais. Enya’s skin prickled as she saw the white braids that framed the blue skin of the Kreelan woman’s face, proud and unblemished now by the black marks that she had worn for so many years. Her eyes blazed with wisdom and the power of her unfathomable spirit, just as the sleek muscles beneath the white robes belied her physical strength. Upon her head was a tiara, glittering with gemstone fire. With a liquid grace that seemed unlikely, unnatural, perhaps, as if her feet did not quite touch the floor, the woman made her way to where Nicole lay, and knelt beside her.
Enya stared as the woman delicately extended a hand to touch Nicole’s face, and saw the scar across the Kreelan woman’s palm, the blood-red talons.
She is Esah-Zhurah… The Empress, she thought silently, her eyes wide with awe.
Nicole stirred at the woman’s touch, and the Kreelan spoke, but not in any language that Enya would ever understand.
Nicole’s mind struggled against the rising sea of voices that threatened to drive her insane. The fire that had filled her blood had left her heart racing without cease, her body filled with adrenaline, but with no way to dissipate it. She lay helpless, her spirit dissolving in the maelstrom that roared within her.
And then she felt a touch, the sensation that someone had placed a hand on her face. But it was more than that. Amid the infinite mass of clamoring souls into which she was falling, the touch offered a rallying point, a focus. Then she heard a voice, felt a powerful mind lead her own back to order and purpose.
“Be not afraid,” the Empress whispered soothingly in the Old Tongue. “All shall be well, my child. All shall be well.”
“And what of my love?” Nicole heard herself ask in the same language, as the great choir burning in her veins began to subside and her mind began to reassert itself. “Death has taken all I have ever held dear. It has ruled my past, and now has it claimed my future.”
“I know of the fondness your kind has for miracles, child,” the Empress said gently. “Behold.”
Enya watched as the Empress rose and went to stand beside Braddock’s body. With a gesture of her hand, as if she were lifting an invisible feather, the massive block of crystal that pinned him to the dark stone began to tremble, then rose from the floor. A flick of the Empress’s hand sent it spinning away across the throne room to shatter against a distant wall.
She then cupped her hands together as if she were holding water, and Enya watched in open-mouthed wonder as the pulse of the Kreelan monarch’s life force took shape between her palms, bathing all of them in an eerie cyan glow. She opened her hands to reveal a ball of light just smaller than one of her fists that, as if it possessed a will of its own, floated down toward Braddock’s lifeless chest. It hung over his heart, growing larger, diffusing as it sent innumerable tendrils all over his body to envelop him in a shroud of blue fire that swirled and shimmered. In a moment, the glow began to fade, then disappeared.
Braddock’s chest rose. With a groan, he rolled partway over, rubbing his eyes with the heels of his hands.
“Tony!” Enya cried.
“Enya?” he asked, perplexed. “What the hell? Nicole? Nicole!” Nicole knelt beside him, motionless, as if in a trance. He had no time to say any more as the Empress took careful hold of his hands and gracefully pulled him to his feet.
The shock of realizing whom he was facing hit Braddock like a hammer in the face. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“You have little time,” the Empress told him in Standard. “You are now the supreme ruler of your people,” She said as if She had known him all his life, “and if you are to save the remains of your great fleet, you must withdraw them with all haste. I will also allow you to retrieve your warriors here, in this place. Your ships will not be menaced so long as they do not attack My Own. But you must hurry.”
“What about Nicole?” he blurted, his mind struggling to catch up with the whirlwind of events, many of which he suddenly realized he had missed completely. “I won’t leave her.”
“No harm to her shall come, I promise you. But I have need of her yet, and shall send her on to you when all is made right again.”