Page 1 of He Will Always Love Me

CHAPTER 1

KARVEX

“My friends, we must sing the Song of Creation and forge a ship to take us into the stars.”

I look around at the other Ishani surrounding me. We are fewer than two dozen now, many of us lost to the ravages of war. Bodies litter the banks nearby, and Kalchuk proposes the answer is to run away?

I can’t tell if he’s gone mad. Perhaps we all are at this rate. So, I look at everyone else’s expressions, studying their sad golden faces. Some of them seem to perk up at the idea, while others look irritated or share my befuddlement.

“We’re surrounded by death here,” I mutter to Renari, my oldest and closest friend. “I don’t think there’s anything left to create.”

He shakes his head, ruffling his wings reflexively behind him. “We can’t give up while we still have the chance to rebuild. Even if we have to go somewhere else, we can start over. We can consider it a genesis of our own,” he offers.

“Eventually, the Ataxians and the Alliance will run out of bodies for the war machine, and this will have to end.”

I sigh, unconvinced. I think that we will meet our end first. They’ve already wiped out thousands of my people.

But what option do we have left? Perhaps Kalchuk is right. Our only chance at a future might lie among the stars. It certainly isn’t here. Our home planet has been decimated by the war the outsiders have brought to it.

Kalchuk leads us in the Song of Creation. It doesn’t sound the same as when it’s performed by a full chorus of hundreds or thousands of Ishani. I realize with longing that I’ll never hear it performed in such a way again.

But even though the sound has changed, this is not a song that is only heard. It is a song that is felt, that is breathed, that is absorbed. It is a song that reverberates through each and every one of us, connecting us all, even linking us to realms we can’t normally be cognizant of.

While we sing, I can feel the invisible thread that links me to Renari holding me upright. It connects me to all nineteen Ishani present, but each link vibrates at a different frequency, with its own unique meaning and importance.

The one that guides me to Renari is an unbreakable chain, so thick I wonder how I never felt it before. That is the power of the Song. It makes known to the mind what was only sensed by the spirit before.

In one voice, we sing. Crystals that make up the essence of our planet are drawn together, quickly building upon each other, growing, and shaping into the form of a crystal starship.

It is all done within a matter of minutes. As the song trails off, we face the curved wings of our only hope. The ship gleams in a way that appears to be metallic, but on closer inspection, a steady eye can see that it is in fact fused from the very crystals we just pulled from the planet with our song.

“Hurry!” Kalchuk waves us forward as a gangplank extends silently from the ship. “Quickly, there isn’t much time.”

A shudder through the ground punctuates his words as if in agreement. It’s another sign of how volatile our home planet has become, thanks to the radiation from the soldiers’ weapons. The ground lurches once more, and I realize dully that we are not a moment too soon.

I don’t know how much longer we would have had a planet to escape from.

Once all twenty of us have boarded the small ship, Kalchuk plops into the pilot’s seat. We rise in the air, looking with horror at the destruction below.

Various wildfires spread across a significant chunk of the land, and smoke spews so freely that there is no clear air left. Large sections of the planet cannot even be seen from above, so smokey and black that it’s as if they are blotted from existence entirely.

The most visible feature is the afterburners of the Ataxian and Alliance ships, kicking themselves into gear in a hurry to escape the impending disaster that they created.

The ship shakes as we lift for the sky, shockwaves rocking our transportation. A particularly catastrophic one signals our homeland’s final surrender. We careen with the force of it into open space, fortunate that the dampeners on the ship absorbed as much as they did.

“We’ve lost thrusters on the starboard side,” Renari mutters beside me. “You can feel it in the maneuvering.”

“We seem to be doing okay, though,” I reply, watching Kalchuk in the pilot’s seat.

Then Rellik, his co-pilot, bends his head to whisper something in Kalchuk’s ear. I see the way both their postures stiffen as they debate.

I know, without a doubt, we are not doing okay at all.

“Radiation is leaking into the ship,” Kalchuk announces when he stands from the pilot’s chair to face us. “But we are Ishani. We can face this together. This half, you’ll sing the Song of Healing to give us time before the radiation poisons us all.”

Then he gestures to the side where Renari and I sit. The look on Kalchuk’s face makes me grab Renari’s arm before I even realize it.

“This half will sing the Song of Transformation to make us immune to the radiation. If we do this together, we will survive.”

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