The Justiceers - Part One: Chapter Nine
the next chapter of my forthcoming novel
The Justiceers
By Daphne Garrido
Part One - Darkest Nights
1.9
Arthur wasn’t feeling very well.
Miriam’s last words before she’d slipped off had been, “Whoopsie.”
He’d flown the M9 three times Grammaton’s legal maximum, breaking the sound barrier, pushing its very limits as a machine. That intelligence inside The Beast made it possible.
Arthur left his Monstodomus at the flight field, doors ajar, stealing that first ship he’d seen which could dock with The Nebberath. Never had Arthur moved with such tenaciousness.
Miriam was suffering critical conditions in the medical bay, auto-doc was doing everything it could, but there’d been so much damage, and the ways The Beast had sealed her up were less-than-ideal. A period passed where Arthur’s gut hadn’t spoken. He’d felt in those moments as if his own life might be ending. Yet, it seemed there would be a waiting game to play.
Arthur would hold out for Miriam’s return. Knowing she’d not leave him behind if there was any choice in the matter, and that she owned the strongest heart in the galaxy.
He wasn’t good at things like this; his own heart would hurt so badly.
Despite what others may have interpreted from his steely demeanor, Arthur felt things more deeply than anyone, and this situation wasn’t one he could even begin to process. He hadn’t been able to cry, just been getting really high, praying for something to relive this all and bring her back.
Arthur rarely had dreams like Miriam, having been fated to sense beyond in less immersive ways, but she’d often be there when he would. It’d been three days since she’d begun fighting for her life, hooked to all these machines. In that time things were changing rapidly for him.
His nightwalks were of vividness beyond what that before experienced, and she’d been there every night.
Miriam always explained the plant-medicines were a dampener for dreams. Now though, it didn’t seem to matter how much he’d smoke, spirit was breaking through regardless, Arthur was going places and seeing things he couldn’t explain.
There was so much time spent beside Miriam in the med-bay. Arthur With no end in sight to this perpetual torture of unknowing, he’d finally heard his gut speak clearly. He needed to keep working.
Oliath had been evacuated at mass.
Arthur’s gut was speaking much in face of the information he’d been able to comb through after all these days so out of the loop. He’d ignored the obscene amount of missed calls and unread messages to focus on questions which mattered most to his purpose as Judge.
What was happening to this planet? Who was the unknown force sabotaging the city in the wake of this chaotic transformation?
Arthur deployed The Nebberath’s entire fleet of drones to survey the evolution of emergence sights around the planet planet. He’d sent dozens to Oliath alone. The data received was showing catastrophe beyond a scale ever seen in The Periphery.
Oliath was dying, it wouldn’t survive the coming days, and his gut knew that.
With so many stranded around the planet, some in the darkness of its far side, and most every settlement having been powered by this greatest city of Grammaton and its solar plant extending into the fires of Learo, Arthur feared the planet might need to be abandoned altogether..
The destruction befallen Oliath had cut all power distribution.
People everywhere were in the dark, the cold, running off what little power their generators were holding. Many would die freezing. There wasn’t time to help more than a number which would always feel insignificant to Arthur in retrospect.
Arthur spent such time coordinating the rescue of every person he could, getting lost in the work. Days passed without sleep. He’d been abusing stims to stay awake. He just couldn’t handle seeing her.
In a state nearing mania, surrounded by screens with far more information than his brain could hope to absorb, he’d begun to feel a most peculiar blooming in his chest. It was Miriam, he’d no doubt. There was a warmest light coming from within.
He’d started having these sensations long ago, after they’d met, but he’d not known what they were for a longest time. Since taking her side as Judge, he’d come to know them well.
Miriam was sending her love.
Arthur had returned to Miriam’s side so hopeful, yet nothing had changed. Except her heart was beating faster, and far beyond the rate it should.
He’d cried there, finally, onto her chest. It hit him at once, just how much he already missed her, how lost he’d be going forward.
Arthur couldn’t bring himself to leave with her side, but he’d not been able to fall asleep with that fastest beeping. He’d finally asked the doc to quiet it for him, until something changed.
His chest hadn’t hurt this much before, but his heart had never felt so big.
Arthur wasn’t ready for their time to be over, not now, when he’d only just begun to find such connection to his soul through her presence, now enflamed by the realization of this impending loss.
He needed his Miriam.
Finding himself in a boiler room; a darkest space of most foreboding energy, Arthur felt an unbound sense of horror. He need to escape.
He’d been running, seeking places to hide then panicking, before beginning the search anew. None had seemed sufficient for this threat he felt chasing him. His heart was burning with fear. There was an impossibility to it all, a sense it was inescapable.
Arthur knew this feeling. He was in a nightmare.
He stopped running, gut commanding resistance to that path he’d normally choose; forcing himself awake. Arthur would face this. Stalking into the darkness, he’d found Miriam’s light begin to blossom within his chest. She was with him.
His journey was twisted and filled with horrors he’d choose to ignore. Arthur went deep, and there was a time he’d even wondered if he was dead. In this blackness he found knowing, there was no need for him to move forward anymore, this monster he’d sought refuge from was right behind him. It had been the whole way.
Stopping in the pitch darkness, drifting in this void, he’d felt Miriam’s love burning more strongly in his heart than he would ever again while living a mortal life. With it shining inside, he’d known himself strong enough to face whatever this foulest demon happened to be.
Arthur turned then, into such surging waves of terror, fear crippling the form of this self-projection. There’d appeared to be nothing, but he always knew a lie.
Energy began raining upon the crown of Arthur’s head, just off to the right-side. He’d come to know this energy too. It was insight pouring in from someone in their family up there. At least, that was how Miriam told it.
In this moment, he chose to listen. Never before had he found words in these showering vibrations, long ignoring them, pretending them less than they were, he’d not been able to face it in full.
Miriam’s words were heard as his own thoughts when tapping into this channel. Somehow, it all became so clear.
It was his own fear, here in the dark, that he was to witness.
Arthur felt an incredible surging of willpower, such an unknowable thing under normal circumstances, sensed now throughout his being most tangibly. He’d closed his eyes, reaching his arms to the side, and turned away from his fear. He allowed it to stay behind him — the one place it scared him most — where he’d no chance to see it. Offering himself there, he spoke from the flowing of that channel in his crown; Miriam’s words.
“Here and now, I release all power my fear holds over me.”
He’d felt his hands taken then, touched by some wickedly powerful force, a fiercest tingling throughout his arms. Up, down, left, and right — Arthur had not felt such energies flow.
It had been known throughout him at once.
Arthur was now to walk with this fear, hand in hand. It was always a part of him. Knowing it was a strength to own and wield, never the monster to escape he’d imagined. To know it, was to know himself.
Finding this wisdom had rung some bell within, carrying acceptance of his deepest darkness, everything began to change quickly for Arthur Katrinus.
When he’d opened his eyes, he found himself in the woods. Its treetops were blistered with auburn splays of sun, such shimmering rays dancing upon the forest floor. There was no better place he’d been beside the arms of his father.
He was standing, and it hadn’t even occurred to him until the moment just before some light began to shine through the farthest visible tree line, legs holding him most firmly to some beautiful forest planet.
There was sun of its own approaching him in these woods. When its energy touched his heart he realized what it was; who it was. Miriam was here.
That light obscuring her approach was glowing ever more luminous, and there was more grace packed into this extended moment than Arthur had felt in his entire lifetime tallied to sum. Somehow, despite her light burning ever brighter, and more golden as she’d come close, he’d seen her clearly at last.
Arthur thought he might die right then.
The sight of her beauty was beyond that of comprehension. His heart had stopped hurting. It had broken wide-open, pouring outward where it had before contracted into itself.
Somehow, even with all the nuance he had found for the love of the woman Miriam was, he’d not been capable of imagining what the sight of her soul would do to him. He’d cried so incredibly hard in her arms.
She’d held him to her chest on the forest floor for such a time.
Something happened there inside him which he’d be on a journey to understand throughout his entire lifetime. Arthur was going to find his faith again.
Before long, gut began to speak of things which Arthur was not willing to hear. It took Miriam peeling her body from his, something she would never do, for Arthur to look this goddess in her eyes.
Miriam had tears welling. She was having trouble finding the words. Arthur had reached out and touched her arm.
He’d told her, “It’s okay. Whatever it is.”
Those words had come from Arthur’s gut, but he was not okay with this at all. Tears were streaming down both of their faces when she’d said it.
“They’ve asked me to stay.”
