(disclaimers and associated descriptions in overture)
* * *
<<ACT FOUR>>
In the shadows above the Whisperglass, the two who had come here unseen continued their observance. Their ships were perfectly safe, and would not be found by the ship of war above, this they knew. There was more then sufficient time to observe the final move in this ancient game, and while both were disappointed in the outcome, watch they would, regardless.
And learn.
"Summarize for me what you have learned in this place, while we wait for this matter to conclude."
The younger Soul Hunter, a Fhedayar, nodded and began to speak... but softly, so the humans below, intent though they were upon saving their comrade, would not hear. "The human telepath before us was drawn to stand upon the R'kaht Whisperglass by forces she did not and could not understand, but wanted to contact... for her own race has been placed in mortal danger by the same enemies these brave people fought, so long ago. From what we know of this device, it was designed to briefly capture the souls of those who stood upon it while their bodies were cleansed, and would then return those souls safely to their homes.
At least that was the theory. In practice, the truth of the matter was somewhat different; some of those who entered the glass did not return. When first I learned we were coming to this place, following the trail that *she* laid down before us, I thought to save those souls, but we did not arrive in time to make a difference."
"This is true." The older of the two, a Praetor Questus as he was known, paused for a moment, then, to gather his thoughts. "And now, I believe that the end of this matter is close at hand, even though the means to that end have not as yet been accomplished."
"So it may be..." the Fhedayar replied, his gaze intent. "I should have seen it from the beginning; the R'kaht have drawn the soul of the human telepath into their crystal, and are holding her in place. Was this done so they might converse with her?"
A nod. "Such is often the wish of trapped congregations, yes, to speak to the one who reaches out to them in their greatest moment of need. Occasionally the visitor is destroyed by this action, but most often the one drawn into the artifact is strong enough to survive. And rarely, that one is strong enough to destroy the artifact, and free the trapped souls within."
"As would seem to be the case in this time, and this place." the Fhedayar ruefully added, a moment later.
The Praetor Questus settled silently down into the rubble, his gaze intent upon the figure and the blazing circle below. "Perhaps. We shall see whether or not this is true, soon enough."
* * *
On the Whisperglass.
"The timing could not be more fortunate," the R'kaht that called itself Willein explained, as a now-tentative Sheynell tried to figure out if there was any other way she could get out of this... if there was a way to avoid making the trip there-and-back, and taking the chance she might also be trapped by the minute yet jarring flaw in the machine named the Whisperglass. A machine that was running out of power; could, in fact, be about to deactivate any time now! "We were running out of time, and then, when least expected, you appeared to aid us."
"But... but if I do this thing," she exclaimed, "If I travel the full path and return to my body, the glass will shatter, you said. Won't that destroy the machine?"
Willein emphatically nodded. "Destroyed, it will be, yes... for all time. But save us, you will!"
"There must be another way!" she insisted. "This technology could be used to help heal my own race of the plague! We could study it, take it apart, figure out how it works, figure out a way to free you safely without destroying it..."
"I wish this could be so," the R'kaht regretfully replied, "But there is no time for such luxuries, no time to remove the glass and its support structure to your ship. The source is failing, young one, and only the will of the All is keeping you suspended between -there- and -here-. They grow restless for release, and if you do not act soon, the ones who wish you harm may escape from our control. If this happens, then we will *all* be doomed.
You must free us now, human, or not at all. Free us now, or suffer our fate... and worse. Free us now and return to your own people with a final warning, a warning they *must* heed at all costs. The protection this place had is now gone, the time of the Final Reckoning draws near."
"What?"
"I will explain; there is yet time for such an explanation, even though the end of our Contact draws near. But after I have told you what I must, the decision you must make. To leave and save us, or stay and die."
What a choice. There was no choice at all, really, when it came down to it. "Say your piece, Willein." she replied. "I will hear your words, consider them, and then make my decision."
"As it should be..."
* * *
The chamber of the Whisperglass.
"That was quick," Klairika remarked, as Julia and her small party of Rangers entered the central chamber at a run. "Please tell me that you didn't damage the transport on the way down, in setting your record time of descent?"
"It's a little... warm," she managed, as she looked somewhat hopelessly in Sheynell's direction, to see her still standing on the circle of glass, still communing with whatever force had drawn her to this place. "But it'll survive. What's the situation here?"
"There have been momentary disruptions in the electromagnetic field surrounding the Glass in the last twenty standard minutes, and the disruptions are becoming more frequent, almost as if the force powering this complex is beginning to falter."
"Good." she replied, as they walked closer to the edge of the forbidden zone. "At least Sheynell appears to be unharmed. Whatever this thing's doing to her, it doesn't appear to be hurting her in any way."
"That remains to be seen." Klairika replied. "If her telepathic abilities have been damaged, we will not know until she returns to us."
Julia nodded. "I didn't want to say it, but you may be right about that."
The Brakiri smiled, somewhat regretfully. "This time, I wish I hadn't been, but we have to do something soon, and now that you are here, the choice of methods is yours. Command us."
"All right, let's..."
"Val'na!" another of the Rangers in the chamber exclaimed. "There's a message coming in from the SHARD OF NIGHT for you."
"That would be Mr. Dawson again, I suppose." she noted with a sigh. "Just before I left, he ran into the hangar bay wanting to tell me something, and called us four times on the way down..."
"You should have answered him, you know."
"I know I should have, but I was worried about Sheynell!"
"Sometimes, we let our worries take control, and ignore the things we should not." Klairika gently, but firmly informed her. "His persistence would seem to indicate the matter he is concerned about is one you should *also* be concerned about. Perhaps you should call him, and find out what this is all about."
A mild rebuke, that had been, but it was a good job the chamber was as dark as it was, as Julia turned away from her First to hide her embarassment. "You're right, of course; perhaps I should. Val'na Tikopai to SHARD OF NIGHT..."
It was then, however, that a strong tremblor swept through the ruins, and all of the Rangers immediately found cover as a storm of dust and no few fragments of rock dislodged from the partially shattered ceiling, high above. And a moment after that, when something completely unexpected and extraordinary occured.
* * *
"You understand the warning, then, and the danger?"
"I *DO*!" a suddenly frightened Sheynell replied. "Whatever it is we have to do, we have to do it now!"
"Indeed. And as such, I am afraid we must now take our leave of one another. I am sorry that we could not help you with the problem of curing your race, but there is no more time for discussion, for any of us." Willein straightened, then. "I do not know what form we will take on the journey we are about to begin, but know that forevermore, you will now be known as the one who set us *free* from this place."
She force her trembling lip into a smile. "Okay, Willein, let's do this, okay? Before I change my mind?"
"It shall be as you wish." Willein paused, then, as if receiving instruction, and then, he smiled. "The others wished to give you a parting gift before the moment came, and I concur. In the ages yet to come, we shall think back on this day, and wish the gift could have been greater."
"Wait!" she cried out, as the vision of the city began to dissolve. "WHAT gift? What are you talking about?"
"The moment COMES, Wanderer. Farewell."
She felt it when they let her go... and it felt like dropping from the top of a mountain, and worse, and there *was* a bottom, and a moment of crystalline pain, before the rebound began, like the worst upward elevator ride she'd ever experienced, and more. And then...
* * *
Julia, and all the other Rangers in the chamber, watched with no small astonishment at that moment as the screen of energy around Sheynell abruptly flickered and died. Watched as their tactical officer came back to herself, and began to step foward, off of the crystal surface. And watched as behind Sheynell's feet, the crystal surface abruptly began to shatter...
And then, ALL of them jumped as a brilliant, purple-blue stream of energy and purpose flared out from the shattering Whisperglass, passing in an urgent stream around and seemingly *through* Sheynell's figure. The telepath looked up as the river of light began to dissipate, the individual threads beginning to go their seperate ways. And they all heard her say one word, then, a word both unexpected, and understandable, as the last ones finally faded from sight.
"Goodbye."
* * *
"What happened?" Julia exclaimed, as Sheynell shook herself down and grimaced, as for the first time in far too long, she moved muscles too obviously strained by the stance she'd held on the Whisperglass, muscles paralyzed by the action of Willein and his All. "Why did you..."
"*Later*." she insisted. "For now, we've got to get out of here, and I do mean right now! The R'kaht told me about a danger that's about to descend upon us, and unless we leave, we're all going to die!"
"Which," the rather annoyed voice of Nicholas Dawson explained through the link a moment later, "Is what I've been trying to tell our dear captain for the better part of the last HOUR. But would she listen to me? No."
"Mr. Dawson!" Julia began, as Klairika moved to Sheynell's side to aid her progression out of the ruins, "Now that we've managed to recover Anla'shok Keynes from what may have been a fate worse then death, we're on our way out of the ruins and back to the landing zone. Perhaps you can explain this problem to me while we're enroute?"
A protracted silence filled the comm line, and Sheynell almost laughed when she heard her captain sigh. "All right, all right! I'm sorry!"
"And you won't do it again, right?"
Julia rolled her eyes, while chuckles passed through the rapidly moving cadre. "I promise. Now, Mr. Dawson, as you were saying?"
"Right... you've got to get out of there pronto, Captain, and the urgency's gone way up since you began your descent. A while ago, the geo-types in the crew were examining the system when they realized that something weird was going on, and once they explained what was causing it and what might result, I decided you had to know, and now, we've decided to come down and get you out of there, before you well... drown is the least of our concerns.
Turns out that having these two planets so close together can be a bad thing, Captain, and after my earlier comments about Dr. Forward and his stories, I should have figured it out myself, should have remembered what happened..."
"Mr Dawson!"
"All right, look, this system's got tides like you wouldn't believe; if it hadn't, the planets would be round instead of egg-shaped. They also vary their distance from one another in a cyclical fashion, and right now, we're only minutes away from the closest approach in thousands of years..."
"He's taking too long." she cut in. "Julia, one of these planets is mostly dry, and the other is mostly water. FIGURE IT OUT."
And rather abruptly, Sheynell watched her captain come to the same conclusion that Nicholas Dawson had come to. "This planet weighs more then the other one does, right?"
"It does."
"And the tides are going to start dragging... water off the other planet and onto the centerpoint pole of this one."
"Which happens at every close approach," Dawson cut back in, "But since this is an *extra* close one..."
"Would now be the time to start running, instead of walking, do you think?"
* * *
"I believe," the Praetor Questus told his companion, as both turned their gaze towards the vast, and now sinister form filling the skies, "That we should be going now."
"Will they not notice our departure?"
The Praetor Questus laughed. "The chaos of gravity and tide will hide our passing from this place. And in any case, our path and theirs will be crossing again soon enough."
"As is known." the Fhedayar observed. "Our tasks are not yet complete."
"No, indeed not. Our tasks have barely begun. Come now."
* * *
The SHARD OF NIGHT.
"Oh, my God." Nicholas fretted, as he watched the last of the ground personnel enter the transports on the bridge main viewscreen. "Come on, come on!"
"What is the status of the phenomenon?" Larieken inquired, as Dasouri's capable hands guided the SHARD down into the atmosphere towards the ancient city of the R'kaht. An ancient city that looked like it was about to be underwater in very short order.
"The 'phenomenon'," he caustically replied, "has deposited a small ocean's worth of water onto the centerpoint-pole of this planet, and said ocean is now advancing towards us faster then I would like. We've got to make this work the first time, or they're in *big* trouble."
At the front of the bridge, Dasouri snorted, and waved his hand dismissively. "Plenty of time, do we have. Water front is only one of your miles high, only moving slightly faster then speed of sound. We are faster, engineer, will rescue our comrades."
"The city is in sight, sir." Larieken's replacement at the operations board reported, as the Ranger transports lifted out of the city. "Standing by on gravitational projectors."
"Val'na," Larieken calmly reported, as the pole-ward horizon behind them darkened with the approach of the water-front, "It may be advisible to, as your kind says, 'brace' yourself."
"Noted, Larieken!" was Julia's somewhat strained reply. "Get us out of here, now!"
In that instant, with more then ten kilometres of air seperating the transports from their mothership, Larieken gave his order, and two constrained beams of gravitational force struck down, grasped the rapidly accelerating smaller craft, and drew them upwards towards the SHARD at a speed that only antigravity technology could manage. "Dasouri?"
"We go!" the Drazi declared, and at that word, the SHARD heeled over and up, and rapidly retreated back towards its home medium, even as the vast wall of water reached the city of the R'kaht behind and below them, and quite thoroughly submerged it.
* * *
"The city..."
"Is gone." Sheynell whispered, and to Julia's surprise, tears appeared in the telepath's eyes, and began to run down her cheeks. "So much history, so much promise, and now it's gone forever."
"But the water... how did they survive these onslaughts before? This wasn't the only time in their history that this happened, after all!"
"No. The planet used to have small seas," Sheynell told her, as she began wiping the tears off of her face. "Before the planetkiller came. The R'kaht used to ride out the really big planetary waterfalls underwater, until they gained the technology to repel the water's advance. But then, the Shadows and their allies destroyed them, as the Drakh are trying to destroy our people... and the R'kaht did the only thing they could, and doomed themselves in the process, not just in one way...
But *two*."
"Why don't you tell me about this later, once we're back on the ship?"
"Later?" Julia curtly nodded, and Klairika deftly administered a sedative while Sheynell wasn't looking, and quicker then even she was expecting, the telepath collapsed into an only slightly-assisted deep sleep.
"*Much* later, I think." Julia leant back into her chair at that point, and let out a groan. "Oh, Valen! Trapped souls and plantary waterfalls... isn't this job ever going to get any easier?"
"No."
There was a long pause, and then the eruption began. "Well, that wasn't very reassuring!"
"Would you have prefered it if I had said, 'we are all doomed, and we're certainly going to die?'"