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  You are Kaishi?

  How does it know my name?

  I know much more than that, Kaishi. I know where you were born. I know your father is the priest of your village. And I know you hate cutting your hair.

  My name and Father’s position, I could excuse. Common enough knowledge for people that live around here. Even neighboring tribes know who my father is, and I’ve been to a few of them on trading trips, so I could be recognized, though the lack of light in this pit would make it difficult.

  But my hair? I’ve never told a soul.

  I never complain, even when Mother takes the knife to my tangled knots. It’s a chance to be brave, after all.

  Getting through that logic brings me back to my question.

  Namely, what is this?

  The voice doesn’t respond. Then my left arm goes numb. I look at it, start to move my right to touch it, when that goes numb too. My legs twinge, and suddenly I can’t feel anything.

  Interesting. There seems to be a problem with you, Kaishi.

  I agree with that. To add to things, there are sounds coming from the jungle now. Whistles and shouts. I recognize the voices and calls. My own tribe, probably coming to see what happened over here.

  Meanwhile, I’m stuck in the oval, unable to feel my toes.

  Yes, that is a side effect. The issue appears to be with total control. That I cannot achieve it.

  Total control of what?

  You.

  There is one thing I know of that can control a person if it wishes to. One thing with the power to make a Solare act different than normal, and that is Ignos.

  The idea connects the fragments for me. Pulls together the prayer at the totem, the strange flash in the sky and now the voice in my mind. This voice, this thing talking to me, must be Ignos, or at least a part of him.

  I wait for the voice to confirm, but it’s silent. I’m, however, happy to keep running down this thought. If Ignos is talking to me, why? Couldn’t he do as he wished without messing with my head?

  Even a god needs to see the world through his subject’s eyes.

  The sounds are getting louder and I’m guessing Father’s warriors will be breaking into the clearing any second. I’d love to get out of the oval, but I still can’t move my arms and legs.

  First, look down.

  I follow Ignos’ instructions and glance at the bottom of the oval. The ink is almost all gone, and in the last bit there is a strange green cube. It’s a brighter green than any I’ve seen before - the closest being a newly sprouted leaf on a spring morning. It’s crawling with spidery blue veins.

  Take it.

  As Ignos says the words, my arms are free to move again. Legs too. I’m tempted to run, but angering the god inside my head seems like a poor choice, so I reach and put the palm of my hand on the cube. It jitters slightly, like a scared animal. Then the veins snap off the green cube and reach back towards my hand. I try to jerk away, but the veins have me.

  Stay still. It will hurt less.

  Now Ignos tells me, after the veins have their tiny hooks in my skin. They’re wrapping themselves around my hand, and crawling up to my wrist. I manage to quell my nerves, partly because I’m so covered with cuts and bites already that a few more barely register.

  The cube melts and I watch as what was once solid breaks apart and flows up along the blue veins. Over my hand - it’s like sap, only not sticky - and around my wrist. The green streams coil around me and, suddenly, harden. Like a torch going out, the green fades to a grim brown.

  I call it the Cache. We’ll need it.

  Ignos’ voice sounds pleasant as he says this. Like he’s describing a flower, or breakfast. I don’t have time to ask why, though, as I see the ferns around the pit split open to reveal the mighty warriors of Father’s tribe. They’re carrying spears, slings, bows, and they’re all staring at me in confusion.

  Which, I would be too if I were them.

  There’s not a story, a lesson from Mother, or an ancient saying that describes what to do if a god takes up residence in your head. So my wide eyes match the tribe’s and I answer their silent questions with the only thing I can think of, “I found something.”

  This doesn’t help anyone, but it does spur Father to break through the line of warriors and scramble down into the pit. He rushes over the dirt and, reaching into the oval, pulls me out. I’m not a baby, though, so I have to help him. Use my own legs to climb over the lip. I’m overjoyed that they both work, that the numbness is gone, and in that instant happiness I start to talk because now

  I’m not staring at a crowd, I’m looking at my father’s concerned face.

  “It’s a gift, Father,” I say. “Ignos answered my prayer. He’s with me now.”

  Father takes this the same way I would have if one of the villagers had told me the master of all creation had taken up residence in their mind. He tilts his head, closes his eyes briefly, and then looks past me to the oval. Notices that it’s empty.

  “A gift,” Father speaks slowly, like he did when I was little and he wanted me to stop crying.

  I’m annoyed that he doesn’t immediately understand, so I repeat the words, “He came from the sky, Father. Ignos is talking to me right now.”

  That last bit is a stretch. Ignos isn’t talking now, and I don’t know why. Later, I’ll understand that his frequent silences are when he’s processing new information. Taking in all the things he doesn’t know and understand, and then comparing them to the Cache, the bracelet on my wrist, to see if there’s something similar inside its stores.

  “Ignos speaks to you?” Father says. He doesn’t drop the skeptical tone. “What is he saying?”

  Say what I tell you. As if I were speaking it.

  Ignos’ command comes charging through my mind, and strings of words follow it. Fantastical descriptions of stars and worlds far beyond our own. It doesn’t make sense, but I’ve been raised to trust what a god tells me, so I repeat it anyway. As I talk, Father’s expression does work, twisting between confusion, disbelief, and fear.

  “All of these things, unknown to you and your tribes, are part of my kingdom,” I say as Ignos directs. “It is now time to prepare for you to join that kingdom, which is why I am here now. Call your neighboring tribes and bring them to heed my words so that we can begin.”

  Ignos goes on, through me, about miracles to come. The words are grand and sweeping. The sort of speech Father might make, but that I have never done. This, I think, convinces Father more than anything. Wondrous stories I can make up. Sermons like this take more effort. Require knowing the emotional cadence of the crowd.

  Ignos does. I do not.

  At the end of Ignos’ speech, Father steps back from me. I see a new look in his eyes, one that brings with it a twist of knotted pain. I’m not his daughter in that look. I’m something else. Both feared and revered. I turn away from that hurting stare and see the warriors have been listening, and it’s even worse with them: Some are on their knees, bowing towards me. Others are openly weeping or looking up at the sky in search of the miracles I spoke of.

  Father interrupts with a call to go back to the village. A pair of warriors stay behind to look over the oval and search for anything I might have missed. The rest escort us back.

  The village is wide awake waiting for us, and our crew breaks apart into a dozen re-tellings of my words. Father takes no time for any of them, instead pulling me to our family’s house. As Father leads me inside, he looks at Mother and says, “Our daughter claims she has been touched by Ignos.”

  Then he turns to me, and with as grave an expression as I’ve ever seen, says, “She will need to sleep, as tomorrow will bring her first ceremony. If Kaishi speaks the rites well, then our village will have a new priestess. If she does not, then Ignos will not brook her mockery, and we will have another sacrifice.”

  6 Flying In

  They’re already hanging as the rest of the grunts enter the shuttle. Flaum, their furry bodies coated in standard-
issue hardplate uniforms and Whelks, who wear nothing and carry their rifles in their ocher, stubbly gel arms. Both species birthed in prolific numbers, which is why they fill the vast majority of the sub-roles necessary to keep the Vincere up and running.

  Gar, if Sax asks him, would rate the Flaum higher than the slug-like Whelks, but only because Gar prefers the taste of fur.

  Sax has his four arms and two legs wrapped around the bars on the roof inside of their assault shuttle. Bas is next to him, and Gar and Lan have similar poses on other bars behind. It’s a ridiculous look to the soldiers below, but they know not to point and laugh because the ones who do tend to meet swift, terrible ends.

  Besides, there’s a point to the exercise. One that Sax knows is coming now that the shuttle has lurched into motion. They’re leaving the command ship and starting the cruise through battle-filled space.

  If Evva’s done her job, then the rest of the Vincere fleet will be running cover for them. Their fighters and frigates ought to be filling every possible attack route with more firepower than even the Sevora care to brave.

  The front of the shuttle - on these, the pilots stay at the back - shifts translucent. Ahead of them, growing steadily larger, sits the orange gas giant and the seed ship. A perfect view of their target.

  “How many fall in the first minute?” Bas asks the four of them, through the masks. “Half?”

  She’s talking about their soldiers, below. Sax doesn’t need to hear the creatures to know they’re nervous, as fodder ought to be before it runs into death.

  “A third,” Lan replies. “It’s a seed ship, not a war vessel. They won’t be ready.”

  “We’ve given them enough notice,” Sax says and the other three hiss in agreement. Leaping late to a fight is bad enough, but it’s taken them too long to get the shuttles loaded and ready to launch. Which means Vincere command didn’t think a seed ship would be here, this far outside of populated space.

  As they get closer, Sax picks out the quadrant divides that slice up the seed ship. Four sections with a circle in the middle. That’s where the Seed Sevora would be. The one running the whole operation. Get to that creature and Sax could set the ship on a death spiral into the gas giant. Let the planet’s gravity do the rest.

  The seed ship’s outer hull appears a faded green, which confirms Lan’s assessment. The emerald color means the Sevora want this one to start new worlds. Get new species. A red seed ship would be militarized and ready to deliver thousands of battle-ready troops to a target.

  Vincere logs say there used to be plenty of other colors too, but Sax hasn’t seen those. He briefly wonders why the Sevora would color-code their ships and asks the group, but they don’t have an answer and he lets the question drop.

  Besides, it’s prep time.

  “Stim up,” Sax says, and everyone, except Bas, who claims she doesn’t like the stuff, dips one of their foreclaws into a small vial of bluish liquid held on their belts.

  The Stim sticks to his claw as he brings it out of the vial, which has a membrane that seals itself after he’s dipped, and Sax raises the coated claw to his mouth. Opens slightly and sticks the claw inside. Licks, with his forked tongue, the Stim off.

  Tastes like sugar.

  Stim hits him hard. It always does. But it’s the sort of slam that’s fun. Sax’s dual hearts spool up to hyper speed, his pupils blow wide, and there’s a slowing that happens. Like someone’s told the universe to take a breath. Sax has time to contemplate the shuttle, to check his miners, his mask, and confirm the others in the set are doing the same.

  Time too to look up.

  To see their shuttle ram into the seed ship’s hard metal hull.

  7 Ceremony

  A trio of hunters move a boar, freshly dressed and cleaned, into a pit full of hot coals warmed in one of the many cooking fires. They waste no time shoveling more coals and dirt over the top. It’ll cook over the course of the ceremony and be ready to serve as the celebratory dinner.

  I’m watching all this as I hack at a coconut under the tilting light of Ignos. The sweet milk inside is going to be cool even on a hot, sweaty afternoon like this one. It’s been almost a full day with a god in my head, and Ignos, it turns out, likes to talk. Though I’m guessing the coconut fascinates him, because he stays quiet until I chop a small hole. When I lift the coconut up and taste the first bit of cool, sugary milk, though, Ignos breaks through into my head so fast that I almost spit up everywhere.

  Fascinating! I would say that the terries on Vimelia are quite a bit more succulent, however, and not quite as sweet.

  He’s been using words like those too. Things I don’t understand. At first I asked questions, but when those led to equally strange answers, I gave up. I figure Ignos has a lot going on that humans aren’t meant to understand anyway.

  Also, I have a ceremony to worry about.

  Fear not, Kaishi. Everything I’m telling you will make sense eventually.

  I’m not worried about Ignos’ nonsense. I’m concerned about how I’m supposed to preach to hundreds of my own tribe. Father’s words last night weren’t idle ones either; it’s not unheard of among the tribes to have someone claim they’re hearing from Ignos directly. It usually follows that they’re proved wrong when one of their “miracles” goes awry. The punishment for that sort of thing is a swift trip to the top of the Tier.

  They don’t come back down. Not in one piece, anyway.

  So now I’m planning my phrases. Running them through as I sip from the coconut.

  Do you not trust me, Kaishi? I will give you the words, as I did last night.

  Words like those would get me killed. Ignos surprised everyone, sure, but those were ramblings in the middle of midnight to a group of tired warriors seeing something they’d never seen before. None of what Ignos said came from our sacred rites, and promises of far away stars wouldn’t do anything for families hoping for rain right here in the jungle.

  Father always says that being a priest is about delivering hope and softening despair, so I’m trying to figure out how to do that.

  I’ve seen many speeches delivered, Kaishi. In places far beyond your imagining. In words beyond your comprehension. Trust that I can find the right thing to say.

  I look up at the trees framing our village, at the Tier standing tall. On many of those trees, small ants scurry back and forth in search of food. Owls and spider monkeys hang on branches, engaging in their own daily rituals. Bird calls ring through the air; mates exchanging news. If Ignos could understand all of them, then perhaps he could give me the words I needed.

  Look at your wrist, Kaishi. That’s where we’ll find what we want.

  The bracelet is still there, tight. I tried to take it off last night, but it wouldn’t budge, so I gave up. Too tired then to care much. As I look at it, the dull brown seems to flash green for a moment, as if it knows, somehow.

  Every recorded speech we have lives in the Cache. I’ll find the right one, and your people will hold you up as the greatest priestess in Solare history.

  Did I mention that Ignos has a penchant for hyperbole? He might be a god, but the rate he speaks about me becoming a legend of this and a queen of that is a little much, even for my ambition-starved soul. Part of me is even insulted - does Ignos really think we’re this easy to fool?

  I’m not trying to trick you, Kaishi. Once we have their hearts, we can use the Cache to find the miracles to capture their minds. Then, you’ll have everything you could ever dream of.

  I shake my head, which causes my father, who’s walking my way, to quirk a smile at me. It’s a different version of his usual grin. One that’s sad in the corners.

  “Deep in conversation with Ignos?” Father says as he takes a seat next to me.

  “You could say that,” I reply. “Have you ever spoken with him?”

  Father shakes his head. “I pray to him, and his replies come in wordless forms. From what I see with you, however, I think I prefer it that way.”

  I laug
h, and it threatens to veer into a sob. Ignos’ descent towards the horizon is bringing what’s about to happen into focus and the idea that this may be the last time Father and I are going to sit here talking shrivels me up inside. Father, in that way parents do, senses this and puts a hand on my shoulder. The pressure helps. It’s a base for me to stand on.

  “You know the rites,” Father says. “You’ve heard me speak them often enough. Say the simple ones and you’ll be accepted.”

  Yes, I know them. Prayers for rain, for food, for health. They’re not difficult.

  They won’t make you a legend either.

  “You really think those will be good enough?” I ask. “How many are coming?”

  “I don’t know. We sent runners, but it seems our neighbors are nervous. Last night’s event hasn’t helped. Nor have they.”

  I see where he’s nodding, and I know what he’s talking about because how could I not? Viera’s been staying in the guest house for nearly two months now, after her friends left. She’s pale-skinned, and she’s a Lunare, so she’s either here to kill us or trade with us.

  I don’t tell him about the games we play, what Viera’s been teaching me. Some things Father doesn’t need to know.

  “She’s the only one left,” I offer.

  “For now,” Father replies. “Viera makes no secret that her friends are coming back.”

  “I thought they were good for us. They traded with all the tribes?”

  “With one eye on everything we would not give them, like your mother’s necklace and my headdress.” Father is really talking about the turquoise. Those bright blue gems belong with the priest and his wife, whomever that is.

  I don’t have anything to say to that and Father sighs a moment later, stands up and holds out his hand for me to take. I do and he pulls me up. Places his palms on my shoulders and draws me in for a hug.