September

Issue 48

Young Uoaka floated, a being of psionic energy pulsing in the dark glory of space. Her attention was held by what loomed before her—a dead planet, lost, adrift. She felt a thrill, a sensation too gentle to be ecstasy, too lucid to be euphoria. Perhaps it was the simple joy of knowing her rite of passage, her Serejorn, neared its end.

It was not just a heavenly body devoid of life that Uoaka needed. She had traversed the galaxy, had passed countless gas giants, ice moons, and other worlds of barren rock and desert. None were suitable. What she sought was a planet that had once cradled life, one which still held the building blocks to do so again.

She expanded her awareness, strummed the web of space-time, its ephemeral strands threading the ego to the infinite. She focused on the planet, brushed its surface with her thoughts, sweeping her mind's eye over devastated terrain, past streets of decaying cities. She saw an ocean of ice, and below it, a crater gouged into the planetary crust. Uoaka knew this scar marked a wound...the fatal wound that had slain this world.