Salvation

by voroshilov

Heralds of THE END

Their approach was slow. The Luminary was strangely silent, apparently no information on the world they had encountered. Ablazed Glory had to trawl through the raw sensor data, telling Penumbra everything she could glean - which was a lot, surprisingly, given the raw data was nigh-gibberish even to trained eyes.

“Atmosphere is nitrogen based,” she recited, “thin and cold - but not dangerous. Gravity is fairly standard. No pollutants in the air, minimal signs of life on the surface, beyond a few scattered settlements, which seem fairly primitive.”

Penumbra stroked her chin with her talons, a concerned look about her eyes. Were they too late?

“Approaching one of the settlements now,” Ablazed Glory called out, “a few bonfires, should be enough oxygen for us.”

“And if there isn’t?” Astrid questioned, despite the fact she knew full well she didn’t need oxygen.

Ablazed Glory shrugged. “We die, I guess.”

“I shall not perish,” Cain declared, “and neither shall you. Your bodily fire may dim, or otherwise cease, but your bodily functions shall not.”

“Shut it, tin can,” Ablazed Glory mumbled, as she brought the Retaliator in for a steady landing.

“I am not made of tin.”

“Tribespeople,” Penumbra blurted out, suddenly sensing the entire village at once, “they’ve noticed us.”

Ablazed Glory looked at her like she was mad. “We just landed a big ship in their front garden, of course they’ve noticed.”

Penumbra shook her head violently. “No, no, no,” she said, gesticulating with one of her talons as she rose from her seat and made for the door, “they know we’re psionic. They’ve noticed us magically.”

“I’m being probed,” Astrid declared, a sour look on her face, “I prefer to be taken out for dinner first, at least.”

“Still,” the Glow sisters chorused, “the nightmare hasn’t been reached.”

Penumbra was already outside, a gradually swelling gaggle of tribespeople surrounding her. Each one was fairly similar to the others, with an emaciated grey frame, two bird-like legs and four thin, long arms. Their heads were shaped like watermelons, only smaller, with their faces looking as though they had been flattened against their skulls, with three beady eyes arranged in a neat row above their nose slits and small mouth.

Every step forward she took sent the tribespeople back one. As she progressed further, they formed a vague circle, cutting her off from the Retaliator. As luck would have it, her friends had pushed through into the circle’s centre just before it had closed. Though, no doubt the tribespeople would have parted for them too.

Their village, if it could be called even that, was tiny. Little better than a few mismatched tents scattered around in a small valley, a bonfire in its centre. Considering the numbers that surrounded them - there must have been a few hundred in total - it seemed far too little.

At the village’s edge was a hillock, a rise of little more than a few metres, looking out over a barren, bumpy, grey wasteland. Penumbra took to it, stepping up to its highest point, and looked out. Before her - beyond the tribespeople who looked to her - stretched the featureless desert of the planet’s surface. Beyond that, visible only through the lack of anything inhabiting the sky, was the Great Void.

Her comrades joined her, arranged in a shallow V. Penumbra was struck by an intense feeling of deja vu, before suddenly remembering the nightmares that the Glow sisters had described.

In unison, the tribespeople bowed to them, heads to the ground and arms outstretched. “Hail,” they chorused, in a guttural accent, “to the heralds of THE END.”