TAL GALE’NH
The light was searing, blinding—intentionally so. Gale’nh had to shield his eyes from the glare that erupted out of the solar crucible. Next to him, the fallen Designate Rusa’h stood unperturbed, closer to the light and heat than Gale’nh could endure. The mad Designate seemed to revel in it.
Giant curved lenses scooped up the light of the multiple suns, focused it, and directed it into a furnace. Conveyors loaded with the mixed debris of broken construction materials, scrap metal, and stone rolled inexorably to where it was dumped into the heart of that inferno, where the structure broke down to the atomic level. The molten materials were mixed with catalysts, seed-crystal matrices were added, and then the substance was extruded into ceramic molds, where it cooled into pearlescent ultrasturdy construction blocks.
Gale’nh did not watch the process. Rather, he focused on Rusa’h, who had summoned him to the crucible. The former Designate didn’t even blink as he stared at the incandescent fury as if it were nothing more than the placid surface of a pond.
Rusa’h spoke in a quiet, distant voice, as if talking to himself. “I was able to live inside a sun when the faeros lived inside me.”
Finally he turned to Gale’nh. His gaunt face was reddened, burned by the exposure to so much brightness. “And you once lived inside the shadows—do they still live within you?”
Shielding his face from the glare, Gale’nh answered honestly. “I don’t know, but I will fight them in every way possible.”
“You should ponder the shadows. Try to understand them,” Rusa’h said. “The Shana Rei must have used you, but you can use them back … just as the faeros used me. When I had the fire in my blood, in my cells, I was part of them. I learned things about the faeros. You must have learned things about the shadows.”
“Those memories are blank,” Gale’nh said. “They vanquished everyone else, but left me alive aboard the Kolpraxa.”
“Then there must be something special about you,” Rusa’h said. “What is different? Understand that, and you can understand them.”
“They left me with doubts and weakness. There is nothing I can learn from that.”
“Not true! I learned from the faeros. I drew great insight and used that insight to battle the Ildiran Empire. That was wrong and dangerous, but it was insight nevertheless.”
“I wouldn’t trust what you learned from the faeros,” Gale’nh said, “any more than I trust what the shadows might allow me to know.”
As the solar crucible continued to blaze, Rusa’h turned his back on the light so that he looked like an eclipse in the form of a man. “I have had revelations,” he insisted. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss them.”
“Revelations? Some would call them delusions,” Gale’nh said. “And how would that help us in our fight against the Shana Rei?”
Rusa’h responded with a faint smile. Even though he was so close to the blazing inferno, the smile seemed incredibly cold. “In a war like this, Tal Gale’nh, perhaps insane solutions are the only possible ones.”