Salvation

by voroshilov

Princess of Dreams

Penumbra was asleep.

She could tell she was asleep by the hands on the clock that hung across from her bed. Despite her eyesight being impeccable, and the clock easily visible from the bed regardless, she couldn’t quite make out a time, only a blur as it changed constantly. She was, in two words, lucid dreaming.

For most, lucid dreaming would be a curious event, but not one to be concerned about. For Penumbra, however, who hadn’t lucidly dreamed since the War in Heaven - with that particular lucid dream not being particularly friendly - it was a cause for some consideration, at the very least a pause.

Pause she did, before her bedroom became just a bed, then nothing. Before her was a cloud of dust, stretching out in all directions. She was in a nebula, at least, she thought she was in a nebula, she might have just been in a big cloud of dust. Perhaps it was something more abstract, it didn’t really matter overall.

Before her, suddenly, stood a woman, in a similar shape to Vortexians, she had two arms, two legs, an upright torso and a vaguely spherical head - Penumbra knew it wasn’t spherical, of course, although dreams were notoriously unrealistic. The woman was four and a half metres tall, slightly taller than Penumbra, with pleated platinum blonde hair extending down to her waist - how Penumbra could tell this was the case despite not seeing it, she didn’t know - her eyes were swirling, deep blue orbs, within were tiny white twinkles like stars in a twilight sky. Her skin was incredibly fair and her figure was clearly exceptionally athletic, though remained fairly small.

She was beautiful, certainly, but every part of her looked vaguely off somehow.

“Penumbra,” the woman called, her voice ethereal and echoing, though Penumbra chalked it down to the dream state she was in. “I have watched you for some time now. You show tremendous promise. I would much like to meet with you.”

Penumbra, already knowing that unknown figures wanting to meet her was a cause for concern, played safe. “Who are you?”

The woman laughed musically. “All in due time. You will know where to find me. For now, you must awaken.”

Well that wasn’t suspicious at all, she thought - only for her entire body to be replaced by empty space.

Her dream suddenly collapsed from under her, thrusting her into the waking world.

She had closed her eyes to sleep at twelve twenty standard time, though her clock only read twelve twenty five. As if to add to the abnormality, she had gone to bed exhausted, her body yearning to rest and recuperate, but had awoken after only five minutes of sleep completely refreshed and thoroughly revitalised.

She stepped out of bed carefully, mindful of potential trickery. The floor did not explode beneath her step or turn into an alligator, however, giving Penumbra enough evidence to suspect she was in the real world.

Regardless, she checked herself over, finding nothing suspicious. That was, save for a set of coordinates at the front of her mind she never remembered reading. The woman had said Penumbra would know where to find her, had she not? The coordinates must have been her doing.

She assumed they were coordinates, at least, they could have been lottery numbers for all she knew.

Recognising the strength of her curiosity, of her thirst for knowledge, she donned her armour and stepped out of the captain’s cabin and onto the bridge of the Retaliator. Ablazed Glory sat in her chair - her fires low and cool - the grey butt of a cigarette hanging lazily in her mouth, a thin trail of vapour hanging off of it. She was slouched back, evidently on the verge of nodding off. But, Penumbra’s vigour and burning desire to know would not allow for sleep at that crucial moment - she could sleep on the way.

“Luminary,” Penumbra’s authoritative call startled Ablazed Glory so much that she almost swallowed her cigarette, coughing hysterically as she spat it onto the ground. “Set a course,” Penumbra continued without regard, “to these coordinates.” She sat in her chair and inputted the coordinates from memory into the console. It took the Luminary half a second to authenticate and input the coordinates and to spool up the engines.

“The target location is in the midst of a large planetary nebula, caution is advised due to potential for debris impact and fusion ignition,” the Luminary droned, though Penumbra overrode its warnings in a word.

“Divert weapons power to shields, get us into the Rift.”

“Hold on,” Ablazed Glory half-spluttered, still recovering from her previous incident, “where the hell are we going? At least confront me first you bloody fiend.”

Penumbra waved her off. “I’ll explain later, but this is urgent.”

Her flaming companion huffed and sat back from her console, clearly intending to allow Penumbra to make every mistake imaginable when it came to piloting the ship. As they entered the swirling maelstrom of the Rift, Ablazed Glory lit up a cigarette and opened up a game of chess on her console - her fires slowly growing and stabilising. The AI opponent she was playing against was at its hardest difficulty setting, yet Ablazed Glory would repeatedly and thoroughly trounce it, either as a testament to her own immense skill or poor coding on behalf of the computer.

When they transitioned out of the Rift, they were met with little more than a cloud of reddish-brown dust, stretching in all directions and filling the entire view screen. There was nothing larger than a pebble ahead of them - at least for the few kilometres the sensors could reliably penetrate - though even the stars had been blocked out by the sheer volume.

Out of curiosity, Ablazed Glory sneakily checked the scanners. They were in the exact centre of a planetary nebula, formed after the death of a star. The Dominion knew of this nebula, having it specifically named with only a single character. A cursory search for translations identified the rune in question: “Irenton.”

Before them lay the Irenton Nebula, where once the star Irenton had shone brightly and four worlds orbiting it had fought in its light. Those four worlds, along with two others from beyond the system, would later lay the foundations for the Irenton Empire, setting aside their differences for the common good, though they would be lost long before Nicholas would crown himself Emperor Eternal. Ablazed Glory had believed it a legend, a propaganda piece to present the foundation of the Empire and later Dominion as more legitimate and heroic. Evidently, she had been very wrong.

“Penumbra,” she said, voice low as the weight of the reality weighed on her, “we’re in Irenton.”

Her companion did not answer, likely having also realised the importance of where their ship hovered. Ablazed Glory found herself muttering a line in reverence, one she had once heard used all over New Horizons during the early days of the War in Heaven, “glory to the Emperor Eternal, glory to the Empire Eternal.” She cast a glance over to Penumbra, part of her hoping to see her companion in awe at their surroundings, though she saw no such thing.

In fact, she saw Penumbra leaving the bridge.

The woman had called to her, the woman from her dream. Penumbra could hear her, at first she had thought it a delusion, until she realised that her magic allowed her to see where it was coming from, a faint glow of energy in the darkness all around her, some thousand miles behind them.