Untitled Read Online Free Page B

in a battered cage of hidden sadness. He was an old, wounded soul in a young, healthy body.
    He could not have known, could not have expected, that seventy years later, an emergency call to combat a Xaphan-snaring operation on a drab, backwater world would see the end of all that.
    Perhaps he should have listened more closely to Countess Monama, that huge woman in black who loved to thump her chest and tell him as a boy that "evil" dreamed of him from afar. Perhaps he merely assumed the evil Countess Monama had seen was simply Princess Marilith—an easy assumption to make. He could not have known that, one day, Princess Marilith was to have a similar vision—that someone, or something evil dreamed of him from afar, and that her vision, like Countess Monama's, held true. Something dark and terrifying would one day come for Captain Davage, Lord of Blanchefort—something with a soul as lonely and wayward as his own.
    And there was no running from that.

2

THE SISTERHOOD OF LIGHT.

    The Sisterhood was adamant. The creature in the Seeker's brig—the Black Hat—must die. She was all that was left of a dark, invisible party caught snaring a Vith chapel on Poteete, a small planet of on fringes of the League. After a short but fierce battle, the Black Hat was captured. Her guard of Hulgismen had been slaughtered by the 5th Marines in an up-close action, her contingent of two Black Hat Painters savagely slain by the Sisters, their brains scrambled, their bodies crushed. She also should have been killed, but at the last moment, she covered herself in a complex, twisting Shadow tech cocoon, one that took the combined power of the Sisterhood days of exhausting work to slowly unravel. She sat in the Seeker's brig, surrounded on all sides by the Sisters in adjacent compartments.
    The Black Hat sat alone … not moving, not saying a word.
    The Sisterhood of Light, powerful and influential, wasn't in the habit of asking the League for anything. They did what they pleased. They were ages old, the League's oldest and most powerful sect and, some said, the real power behind its continued success. In the time of the Elders, the League served the Elders faithfully, faring the stars for them in ships of their design. The Elders, twenty-five in number, celestially huge and powerful, required starlight to survive and their beloved adopted children—the League—located suitable stars for them. And they were kind, sharing the starlight with all. The Elders loved their League children and rewarded them with Gifts—the gift of youth and health, the Gifts of the body, and to a select few, the Gifts of the Mind, turning them into mortal gods.
    And then the Elders faded and died and the League was all alone … alone with their mighty Gifts.
    The Sisterhood of Light was formed ages ago to investigate the Gifts and determine their potential benefits and possible dangers, and as their knowledge grew, so too did their power and influence. It was said the Sisters were no longer Elder—that they had evolved into something else, something strange. It was said in hushed whispers that the Sisters had a hand in deciding who lived and who died in League society … and in Xaphan society too. Any who lived to see the next day, they say, was by the Sisters leave.
    Stories for a dark, windy night, no doubt.
    The Sisters and the Black Hats were ancient enemies. Once Sisters themselves, the Black Hats, proud, rebellious—evil—were prone to studying forbidden things simply because they were forbidden. They broke away, laughing in the Sisters' faces, taking all their knowledge and power with them, and became Xaphans. The Black Hats, using the Mass—the infamous Phantom Hand—could kill any they chose to, even millions of miles away. Only the Sisters could turn the Mass, could prevent the Black Hats from killing at a thought. As such, the Sisters and the Black Hats were continually at odds, locked in an unending battle of the mind, their power intertwined