“BIRTH OF PHARAOH” CHAPTER 5

“the white queen’s out-dated entourage”

COPYRIGHT 2023. CORINNE DEVIN SULLIVAN. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

“Something is cooking, below, My Lady, and it is not me.” I say into the melted voice box in my helmet.

The Macrabre Illie Bo withstand incredible temperatures in outer space. She falls into the ore with a glop sound. Blobs of things shoot straight towards me only to fall short.

I watch a while as she swims, searching the night sky above her that she will never see again. She sees only me. She is never mistaking the answer I hold: that she cannot fly. She can only crawl. Now, her limbs are torn in two from her spine. She withers in the mess below. Blobs of ore fill her nostrils. It oozes.

This is how I stay up-to-date on the news, responds the telepathic voice of the departed female Macrabre Illie Bo. Less than a second later, she discards her limbs and forearms forever. Her mind is flown away. The body is thrown again into upheaval with a current so large that the mess down below seems to steam with a glorious aura. Then, she is vanished from the pit of molten ore she had maintained for far too long. She is gone from this place completely.

In my field of thought-vision, I can’t escape the urge when it hits me strong: to search out where the vile soul of one deceased Macrabre Illie Bo is off to next. I could spy on her there. I could watch her do her next act. However, I don’t dare, and I never do. It’s rude. Karma will force me to treat all beings in this way because, if someone like me shows up on my road of life, I don’t want that one, either, tracking my own spirit should I ever die even though I can’t do it, naturally.

When the dear departed female went down, the chain which I have been suspended by, roasting for far too long, on the pulley sent me skyward. I soared upwards for the full half-mile of distance as the Macrabre Illie Bo fell into her mess.

By less than an inch of ground, I caught my toe on the tiny platform. It was built narrowly into the wall in front of the large door.

There, I used an unethical mathematical symbol embedded in my necklace that breaks almost every computer. Luckily, it worked again and released the door’s trigger which allowed me to depart into harsh space.

Outside, I catch a sight of wreckage surrounded by asteroids: ships with lifeless figures inside. Everything is quiet except for the noise in the room I have departed. Male Macrabre Illie Bo driven mad by suspension and grief scurry into the pit after their lover.

As for me, I am wasted. I simply drift.

Everything is dead. I’m in a terribly crusted spacesuit. Space stretches out. Universes and winds of Fate surround me. And, if Fate is around, her hand gently picks me up now. This is good because I cannot feel a thing. I am broken and burned, and I am fairly certain my torso is alive, but all of my limbs are now dead.

I dream about where I should land, eventually: in a ship orbiting the Planet Po. But this destination could be a million days travel, yet, inside a regular ship. I am only a floating dead body in a badly burned suit.

Fate and I do well together. She guides my wasted mind, and its body, like a talisman in outer space. She is not letting me go. I am making it somewhere so long as I believe every wish inside my heart.

So, I move with Fate’s unseen hand right up to the Hidden Wall. Then, the button inside my necklace triggers all I ever need to pass through the Hidden Wall, twisting and turning around (several times) so as not to be fried. In short order, I am on the other side.

The air here is sweet with spice and oil that has never been mined. It drifts like little globs here and there.

Still drifting, the space between myself and the Major Universe elongates itself completely. I am getting further off track, so it seems.

Time is everything now that I come to know I can’t possibly survive sailing forward without a plan. Creepy crawly sensations get at me in the inside. In a moment, I will fry. Seconds become a year. Fear of heights is absurd when, here, everything is wasted space that goes on forever. Closing my eyes feels much better than seeing the hideous waste.

I slow. Then, I come to rest in place. I cannot move one bit. This motionless I cannot bear.

There is nothing like this sadness. Immense morose mixed in with exhilaration says at once that I must perish shortly, or die.

There’s a hope inside me. It goes like this: I might meet a friendly spider I once knew in the days of the great Houses. He was my kind. I would be able to catch a ride. Spiders are sort of the king out here, in this, the wilds of outer space.

Poor things. They surround the Major Universe and threaten things so the Hidden Wall was built to protect against them.

Spiders are numerous here. They are huge, to be sure. Haven’t seen one yet, however.

But, then, I can’t believe my eyes because a lone star-cruiser crashes out of the netherworld beneath me. First it was a strange shadow moving in an unnerving pattern. I didn’t mention it. It was so scary to me. Then, it was coming towards me from below. Next, I saw her for what she is.

I see how the hull is covered in space trash. Who knows the color it once drew for now it is ash, almost like rock or porcelain. Filth clings everywhere. Inside me, I know this is the Bonne Valle Quatra returning as if a dream from the abyss. And, in a moment, I read her name still written on her hull: Bonne Valle Quatra.

This poor vessel was marked as doomed in the sky logs, back when the White Queen was fishing for answers to her crew as to where their supplies had all vanished to. At once, I knew it was the captain and crew of the Bonne Valle Quatra who were at fault.

I ask myself what next move to make. The extremely massive vessel seems to pass me without care so that I might only be just out of reach for its magnetic situation, but then an awesome sight emerges: a burst of light and it is tugging me into a massive portal which I soon discover is the ship’s interior docking area for smaller vessels.

The ship’s tractor beam astounds us all by its delicate handling of my little body compared to massive cargo it was built for. However, it drops me from a height of eight feet. My helmet strikes things and I am gone.

When I open my eyes again, this gaping chamber I find myself inside of fills with the right type of atmospheric pressure for me. My suit and even my clothes seemed to fall apart at the seams. Dimly, I recognize people. They pull my head from the broken helmet. They proceed to do anything they can to help, and my body is purified with light and water, but also, I can’t barely move. It’s a terrible thing that has happened to me, with everything with the fatally dead Macrabre Illie Bo female did to me.

Everything but myself—shackles, spacesuit and more—is slowly being removed by some gigantic claw, by using its tiniest pincer extended out from one excruciatingly huge arm.

I am so raw and so cooked that it would be wrong to claim here I am even still alive as of yet.

I am restless, lying down like a lump of meat and broken bones, tied in place so I don’t do more damage.

When the jaws of death stop yawning at me, so as to allow me to listen to the people’s voices in the room, it’s still a long time before I sense the meaning of anything alive in my sphere. This, I do not emerge from. Rather, I fall into a stupor.

Inside my inner domain, I contain my emotion. I try escaping reality in retaliation for being ejected from it. Searching and searching with my mind, and then I halt the practice to convince myself I am the only being onboard. I continue my struggle, mentally, to finally locate anyone. I beg someone to think up an answer—spill the beans, so to speak.

Voices in the world of the living bring me towards consciousness. The room is the operating table. People and some lizard type creatures are standing near at hand. Physically, I am about to waste. It’s terribly cold. I hear a last precious whimper escape from my terrible form as if saying to Nature that I am now hers once more.

Almost as if on cue, through the sliding door, comes an atrocious but maintained lost entourage of the Golden Queen. I sense them at once. They used to be old friends. They’ve been disappeared for so long, no one like me cares to find them anymore.

There might be fifteen people who stand there, and these people were said to have perished in outer space lifetimes and lifetimes ago, in this very ship which is called, if I remember correctly inside my haze, the Bonne Valle Quatra. There’s a movie someone dreamed up for her because she was just so “priceless” in the days of yore.

In reality, this group simply vanished. It really did happen all the way back in the years when Eartha Tetus existed. Now, it is magic to be near to everyone once more.

The entourage has since grown scaly and worn. They cannot survive on land after far too many years in space flight. Stopping motion could set them back a million years in a regular atmosphere, but I won’t say. Hurting people’s outlook is not my thing.

They strangle my vision. I am exhausted. They struggle with each other in order to be the first to speak to me. Believing I am still a last survivor of their long-lost landing party, they snatch me up and place me on a flying table to arrive, naked, in the medicine area of their cruiser.

The best medic is rushed in. He had been enjoying star gazing during this evening’s supper and he actually mentions it, too. He can’t understand how my body works for the flesh is just terrible to see, and all the little bones are crushed or missing. I listen to every mind on board, whether each is standing before me or not. The medic stops gaping and just gets to work for a long time. I imagine the view he’s missing while his supper turns cold.

Trust me, everyone stops by to see me in person. I say nothing but, even though I try to detain the reaction, they soon realize that I am the one who lead the Na Halien training so long ago. Back then, I was a real nobody except that everyone praised me for the job I did and, for that, I was well-known by my looks in every corner.

For me, it was easy to talk telepathically to every person on-board the Bonne Valle Quatra. With my conversation buzzing in their minds, it’s easy to see why they all become terribly nostalgic. Soon, they are crying, and yet I still am being operated on.

They each allow me some room in their heads, and they go back to work. It was a nice time because everyone was good to me, back then. However, these days, they are all into the evilest crud they can get into. That, I detest.

During operations that went on for so long with the ship’s best medic, it was nice to talk back and forth with individuals who are used to my sort of prying. Different people come in person, stand shocked by my beside, and then they depart. This keeps going on for some time.

The medic is using every tool he has.

Everyone wants to hear about things if I ever wake up. They plan to have some sort of a tribute because it’s been so long since a person of both stature and their class and their time period has visited.

I am having trouble remembering everything. It’s been such a terrifying journey since I almost was cooked by the Macrabre Illie Bo. Yet, they continue to throw ideas.

These people are still fighting with each other just to get a place in this world. Though their wrinkles and warts and long, long white hair are perfectly there, and yet they still don’t know themselves that well. In other words, aging hasn’t resolved this terrible trait they each developed.

I know they can tell how I won’t tell them much before I understand their true aims for they don’t know they are meaningful men and women, yet. They pretend things they say they like. They lie to each other about they feel. They beg me to feed them some mythical mental reality. They push each other to say things to one another. They shove around places they know they shouldn’t be going to. Until I wake and can talk with my mouth, I have to keep them at arm’s length, here in the realm of my mind.

I eventually “tell” them, through my telepathy, they must have been lost in a terrible time warp due to recurring computer problems, so it seems. This is something I sense based on nights-long mental conversations we are all having together. Problem with telepathy is sometimes you hit on things that aren’t that strong with the other people. It’s easier in real life where an actual object is placed before a group and, next, discussed. In my current state, lying still and completely sedated upon the operating table day after day, I can’t argue.

They love their idea of a god or a friendly spirit on-board as all of our protector.

Next, their confidence in me slackens. They are all ignoring the thoughts I reach to them with. I know they must be staring into stupid air trying to find someone to talk to in real life when it was me telling them all the while something I thought of, even though I am a motionless figure upon the medic’s table, waiting for his work to stir something back to life inside of me.

The heroic vessel sails further away from the Hidden Wall, far beyond the guide- posts of civilization. Then they zigzag around.

“What is your name, sailor?” Asks the medic. He has a stethoscope and a pair of gloves.

“I cannot remember. I don’t remember where I am going, either,” I say, surprising us both. I hadn’t intended to say anything for a while.

“We are going to the Queen’s Castle. But we are lost and have been for many years,” he says.

Then, he looks strange. I can hear him wonder inside his mind why he said it.

Only recently were these individuals finally informed of the Queen’s death. This happened a long time ago. They were away and missed the entire dilemma. Now, they are fevered about keeping everyone onboard alive in her memory, or something of this sort of thing.

The medic tells me, “You are a strange one. Try not to stay awake. We are going back to the White Queen’s castle, to her floating Sky Garden, to see who is still living there, and to find her replacement. For us, she shall arise anew, one more time again.”

Now, I see it all: They will not be thrown off their mission: the Queen’s only surviving bloodline may be alive on one of the three planetary orbs floating in midair inside her sky garden, deep inside the Major Universe. And they are not happy because they are too far away, beyond the Hidden Wall. They want a big reveal in her honor before they die, yet the ship cannot penetrate the hidden wall! They failed to notice what my necklace holds. I take it from a box it was placed inside of while the doctor worked.

The Medic has secured a place for me to stay. Then, he plies me with rum, and I tell him old stories. I am surprised when he jabs me with a needle packed full of juice. He yells at me through my stupor, “Stay here, Na’ Halien scum!”

I fall to sleep. Perhaps I am drugged.

Na’ Halien is an old term. It predates the eons spent with the Golden Queen upon the throne. It predates the days when our planets aligned themselves to stars. Some say the origins of Na’ Halien predate the Nehiolethic period, when the Derelicts and The Wanted Not were happy and lived everywhere, though they were still restless.

The word Na’ Halien literally means “the wind.” During the old days of The Training, Na’ Halien eventually meant, “to fight well”. But, in some places, I’m told, it means “to fight with the wind at one’s back.” Either way, fighting was the basic discourse, so far as I knew, by the time the White Queen was born and ascended her throne.

Recently, students have to tell me, slowly, that Na’ Halien actually means solely, “the wind,” and they tell me it always did. So, that’s that. I just been using the word for a trillenia after someone else seated beside me, way back when, had dreamed it up. And I can’t remember him telling any of us in the room that day why.

Either way, time moves forward.

I lie awake inside the tube that heals everything after every inch has been cut through. My Itchy skin tests me. I simply remain stationary for I am a great teacher of The Discipline and resolve to demonstrate it wherever I can.

My friend, the Medic, informs me by a printed note, brought into my berth by a young woman, that sleeping in this tube is an absolute must. Soon, I fight sleep and then let go, again. I’m giving my body enough time to heal itself.

Na’ Halien meant a lot more than “to fight”. It meant, also, the ones who fought and lost everything good in the universe to the Golden Queen’s evil predecessors. That’s right: the White Queen was brought into existence by a sleek crew. I’ll say no more other than hint. And you may remember how getting rid of the men and women who had been raised Na’ Halien laid the bed upon which the Golden Queen was consecrated. I’m being rude here.

Base, sacrilege culture, where people are rude and are hated everywhere, for a long time was spat at, and it was called the Macrabrie. They scraped and jingled with The Holy Black who had suddenly appeared to be everywhere. Once, this picture seemed scary, then it turned downright rude. I won’t even go into details.

I think about things and how time moved forward. The Holy Black ruled all of Eartha Tetus. And it was right in those days when, it seemed, Na’ Halien was uttered with such hatred by all the new rulers and the witches and the regular people that one could die simply saying the name in the wrong space.

For me, being old, Na’ Halien still only means “the wind”, but I hail from The South, close to the border, where people are educated very carefully. I usually come from the Amashey planet. But, also, and many, many times was I born into the relics of the majestic houses. In fact, at the dawn of time I was once inside one of the oldest houses, one where women only were permitted to have a say: The House of Heroic White. Yet, I was born a man so that was that.

From that location, I was raised many times, mainly, in The West, with the merchants, during the time of the White Queen’s rule. And for a while I am lost in contemplation thinking of all the men and beautiful women and youngsters whom I had the glory to teach. Such times as I have had are priceless to me.

Finally, I am healed. I start to roam around.

Bonne Valle Quatro is home to a lively bunch. These people feel a lot like my old families, back on Amashey. They are cordial enough and I like that. These olden-days folk are priceless. They say they are sorry they never met people like me before. Then they laugh and add something like, “who acted like geniuses and street fighters mixed together.”

It’s very sweet because they all say they care here. I don’t mind spending some time resting here and steeping inside their thoughts.

Yet, telepathically, each one tells me how the word Na’ Halien just means, “to fight”. At the same time, they speak thankfully about how all of the Na’ Halien have been killed off, successively and repeatedly, without mercy.

Be that as it may.

As days turn into weeks, I seem to be a competition to the men, but the women promise me they shall be more than glad to invite me to participate. I stick around waiting to see more. It’s all the same cultural push and pull, as usual.

In Na’ Halien, the culture, there is a distinct impression within the term “rude.” I know this because, once, I was a Na’ Halien queen.

Yes, I was a queen.

This was during a time when those who were trained successively one day, all at once, sort of angered of everything and yelled about everyone and then began making their own Houses—something which they were absolutely not permitted to do. That was the beginning of the “Na’ Halien revolt”, but it really wasn’t revolt because what happened was understood later as justified. They were trying to rest after so many years of acting diplomatic.

And there were a lot of very impressive Na’ Halien who ended up leading a lot of people I had carefully trained in a different direction than the plans for peace had laid.

In the mix, I died and was reborn. Then, I was a queen like the best of them, and this is the story I feel I should relay to anyone who cares to hear me, about my time as a Na’ Halien queen.

TO CONTINUE THE ADVENTURE CLICK ON CHAPTER SIX: “UPON THE MOON CALLED HALIEN-6” FROM THE RENEYT HOMEPAGE!