“We should confront it,” said Selene, “find out what it is and what it wants. It's not like we can hide from it anywhere.”
Ondo looked around, searching for some means of protection or escape. He found none. They waited while the figure streaked towards them from the blaze of the nebula. At the last moment, it slowed to a halt to stand upright on the other side of the transparent bulkhead, hanging in space. In form it was as she recalled: more-or-less standard-spectrum humanoid, apart from its size, its thrust-forward, animalian head and triple eyes. The light that she remembered glowed from its metallic body, although whether it was some manner of void-protection field, she couldn't tell. The figure was clearly studying them; Selene registered a battery of sensor sweeps emanating from it, although none of them appeared to be harmful.
“Do you recognize what this thing is?” she asked Ondo.
Ondo seemed to be struggling to find the right words. “I truly thought these beings were stories, nothing more.”
“Is it a Concordance weapon system?”
“I don't think it is, no. Entities like this have many names, assuming I'm not connecting too many unrelated reference points. Some cultures have identified them as benign spirits, others as giants that perform miraculous feats of strength and endurance before vanishing. Their forms vary – some are smaller, or ethereal, or phantasmagorical – so it's possible I am over-extrapolating. I've heard many names used for them, but the term I've come across the most is Aetherals.”
“I've never heard the word.”
“They are rare entities and that name is only found in certain cultures. The stories of your world, if there were any, might have used a different word. Your father knew about the legends, but he never suggested he'd picked up any sightings of such an entity upon Maes Far, or even that your people knew what the entities were. Most likely, he dismissed the stories as galactic folklore, as I did.”
“What specifically do these entities do? Who do they help?”
“Much of it is standard supernatural fantasising. In some stories they intercede to defend people faced with some overwhelming terror, or they appear from nowhere to offer gnomic advice. The tropes are common enough in the storytelling traditions of many worlds, to be honest: they're entities with miraculous and magical powers.”
“Well,” she said, “you're right that there was definitely nothing like them on Maes Far. When Concordance constructed the shroud in our sky, no mythical creature materialised to stop them. We all just died.”
“The beings don't appear to fight Concordance openly, but they do appear to be opposed to them if the stories are to be believed.”
It sounded like wishful thinking. “You're saying it doesn't represent a threat. If that's true, it helps explain why it rescued us, and why our bodies have been repaired. It doesn't explain what it is and what it really wants. And why it is here, of all places. Has anyone ever communicated with one of these beings in any of these tales?”
“Not that I recall.”
“Then it's time someone did,” said Selene. She pushed the control orb forwards, sending the platform towards the entity, still waiting unmoving in the void. As before, the pathways coiled soundlessly out of the way. Within a few moments, she and Ondo were directly in front of the figure, only the transparent bulkhead between them.
She peered into the entity's triple eyes. As before, she read intelligence there, puzzlement. Then again, it was possible she was projecting her own thoughts onto it; it was impossible to read any expression on the entity's fixed face. Its elongated snout was utterly impassive. Still it hadn't moved as it considered her through the bulkhead. The effect was disconcerting.
Ondo, standing beside her, said, “In fact, you have seen a being such as this before. Do you remember?”
“I don't, and I'm pretty sure I would.”
“At the Depository, when the Warden entity glitched and transformed rapidly through multiple body forms. One of them was a glowing, triple-eyed giant similar to this.”
Selene replayed the memories of those moments. Ondo was right: the Warden and the being before her were related somehow, products of the same technology.
“Do you think they're in communication?” she asked.
“It's possible, but I'd guess not. The Warden was clearly malfunctioning, and this entity mainly looks bemused, as if it can't work out what we are. I…”
Ondo stopped as the Aetheral moved again. It splayed its eight-fingered hands wide and drifted forwards to touch the transparent bulkhead. At the same time, the halo of light around it intensified, encompassing the wall of the ship.
“It's coming through!” Selene shouted, yanking the control orb backwards to get away from the breach that was about to open in the bulkhead. They had to get out of the dome, put a solid barrier between them and the opening. She directed the platform towards the entrance they'd come in by, hoping that door was strong enough to withstand vacuum.
The platform didn't move quickly enough. Before they were halfway there, the pathways coiling out of their way like the loops of some furious sea-serpent, the entity was through and in the dome with them.
Somehow, impossibly, there was no loss of atmospheric pressure; the figure had passed through the bulkhead while leaving it whole, as if the hull of the ship was skin that had immediately healed over.
She took her hand off the control sphere. They couldn't run from such an entity. It loomed closer to the platform and landed to tower over them. The light shining from its body dimmed to a pearly glow. Was it constructed from metals or other materials? It was hard to say. It looked carved, but also organic in the way that its thick muscles bunched beneath its skin. Its size and strength were abundantly clear close-up; it could probably snap her in two if it so chose, despite her augmented strength. Ondo had shown her battle-mechs used in the Omnian War, deployed by planets on the Magellanic side as they
