Lavoid Trigger Prologue 1
Drifting Among the Stars
By Nanaki & Paul Nathans
Unknown Time, Unknown Star System
The Lavoid whimpered.
It was a tiny child; one regarded as a failure of the species. A Class F, a simple black-brown ‘eye-head’ common to the ‘eye-head’ of the Shell Eggs around Lavoids that were not ‘weak Spawns.’
It, he, she, or any type of gender, was filled with thoughts of sorrow as it clung to a host Lavoid, a Class C, Type I. It knew all too well that Class Cs fed on Planets for energy. Type Is could jump from planet to planet and live almost eternally, they possessed the strengths to harness the necessary abilities needed to perform such an action, and a life cycle. They were the ones that, more than any other Class Cs, would most likely have to fly into Black Holes, when the universe possibly became too clogged up for them to exist until the end of their life cycles. For with enough energy, any Lavoid could live nearly forever.
The Class C was not its parent, but its current ‘host’, its current ‘travel body’. It sighted a planet, green and full of life, and descended, picking up speed until it moved faster than the speed the four Moons circling the target took to rotate. The Class F ‘snuggled up’ against on shell spike, and hid between the others.
Its journey with this Lavoid was at an end. It was fed a small burst of energy by its comrade, and rocketed off into space, whirling away, and beginning to enter a comatose state. There it would wait until it found another Lavoid to travel with, until he happened upon a Class E, or Class D again. Then it could feed off asteroids, and gain enough energy to launch itself to another, then another, building in strength.
Wishful thinking. The parasite knew it couldn’t advance to a Class F, II, or a Class F, I, and be able to jump from asteroid to asteroid itself. It would have to travel with others, just to stay alive. It might be able to jump the necessary distance to reach an asteroid, but its own momentum would be its doom.
Class F, IIIs lived in symbiosis with whatever host they happened upon, jumping from Lavoid to Lavoid until they were able to settle upon small space bodies, like meteors, and drain them. Most Class Fs had to attach to other Lavoids to travel, seeing as they lacked sufficient momentum to do so themselves.
Its own journey was nearing an end, at least with this Lavoid. Despite how Lavoids all knew the dangers of existing from an emotional standpoint, and kept themselves from such aspects of perception, the Class F couldn’t help but grow ‘attached’, in a way, to each of its hosts. They had aided it; thus it couldn’t help but feel some gratitude. Such gratitude, to a being as devoid of emotional feeling as it was, enhanced the slightest feeling of such emotions.
It did have a target for a jump, though, thank goodness. Most Lavoids of Class F, III met their doom upon the end of the journey of its first symbiont. Provided they found any Lavoids to attach to, of course, many Class Fs didn’t even make it that far. It considered itself lucky, this Class C, III was its fourth host. Although it still had not found a place to feed from, and was starting to weaken from lack of energy, it had enough time left if it could just continue on.
Its target…
A Standard Hour or so ago something that had been idly noted by both as a Class B Lavoid coming from the nearby Kalendra System. More specifically, its third planet. The Kalendra System was at the edges of the Lavoid’s ‘planet perception’, for it, most likely around eleven thousand Standard Years’ travel from where it was now. The thing was sensed as to have been a spawn, with a speed of acceleration that had been built up from what could only be two thousand Standard Years of travel.
This thing was moving very fast.
The Lavoid suddenly became afraid it would not be able to make the jump to the Class B – that it would meet its end out here in the stars.
Fear.
That was an emotion the Class F could guess many of their weakling kind shared. Possibly Class Es, and Class Ds, as well. None higher than a Class D had ever perished, ever been slain, but Class Ds, Class Es, and Class Fs seemed to own outstanding mortality rates, perishing from simply being weak, stronger Fs perishing while trying to take comets if they were brave enough. Those of the stronger Class Fs had been able to take asteroids, but even they would be lucky if they could manage to do so. Only one had taken a comet, and survived, know to their species.
Comets.
Like a wisp that sent a chill through the thing’s body before it could finish entering hybernation, its three-pronged lids flipped open.
What it saw was unique… To say the least.
There was the Class B Spawn, all right.
Yet it was not alone.
Some kind of ‘thing’ tore through the air at full speed. The Lavoid, curious, projected its senses. It hissed inwardly, finding the light blue streak chasing its target to be a blue-haired human girl in a light-blue cocoon-like aura. The cocoon which encased the human woman smashed straight into the Class Cs’ ‘eye’.
JENORA!!!!!!!!!! The Lavoid’s mental scream resonated throughout the stars. This Lavoid had been one of the ones who had shown it the most pity. Another enormous number of Class Fs failed to survive, simply because no Lavoid was willing to pick them up. The Lavoid counted itself very fortunate to have found this many companions… Three so far. It was grateful for Jenora’s aid, and the fact that those monsters known as humans now roamed the stars filled it with a sudden, unreasoning dread for its companion’s safety.
The Lavoid screamed in reflexive annoyance, ‘she’, too, apparently rather infuriated by being intercepted by a meager little human. The human herself had been thrown backwards a great distance upon impact, but was regaining its original vector. The needles all along Jenora’s shell pulsated, firey energies building up to launch outwards, and arc down to cascade into the female. The cocoon was nailed, all right, but was unaffected for the most part. Only a slight atrophying in the cocoon’s structure signaled it had been weakened. The Class F screamed and charged towards the thing, intending to use the element of surprise, and the momentum of the position it had, to tear through the cocoon – and then through the human woman herself.
The Class F shot in even as its adversary began to prepare some type of magical wavelength. It focused upon the female with hate, emblazoning the image of the arrogant human in her mind. She was a young woman most likely barely out of her ‘teens’, to use the human development term. It built up its momentum and crashed into the cocoon – rebounding off of it with structure-jarring force.
Jenora was already charging forwards as well, seeking to end this quickly by slamming into the girl ‘herself’, reducing her to a bloody nothingness. The Class C, Type I continued to build up its velocity as it ripped forward through the cosmos, ignoring the energies gathering before ‘her’, its victory ascertained.
The wavelengths coalesced around the human and erupted outwards in an incredible blast of pure Star energy. The Star energies slammed into Jenora’s eye pod, and through it, the Lavoid’s own speed propelling ‘her’ forwards with so much force that the Star energies sliced the shell neatly in half, impacted with the inner Lavoid in the center of the shell, and consumed that, and the Lavoid Core within, as well as whatever Lavoid Bits ‘she’ may have possessed, in the detonation.
The Lavoid’s scream of agony, and that of its friend’s, reverberated throughout space, and into the skies. The Class F was consumed by overpowering anger at the audacity of this freak of humanity, and screeched forwards once again. This time the Class F succeeded in smashing through the cocoon, halting it in space, and ripped through it towards the woman before it realized its error. The cocoon was already reconstructing itself, and was once more resuming its preset path. The Class F, now left to fend for itself, could not risk remaining at its current coordinates a moment longer, or when ejecting off of the woman it would most likely end up caught in a trajectory that would trap it in orbit around the planet. However, it was close enough to enact a semblance of vengeance. It extended tendrils of power into her head and literally tore out her memory of the whole incident.
At least, displaced them from her mind so that she wouldn’t be able to access them. That in itself wouldn’t be enough, the mind in itself could override any mental influence of the sort, the memories would return eventually. Unless the wavelength was sealed away.
And the Lavoid chose conditions upon which to base the seal that were so much of an impossibility that the seal would never be broken. ‘If you had a younger brother who is now older than you, and if an even older version of that younger brother was seen at the same time as you had seen the older version of your younger brother, then if the Lavoid you pursue is slain, you will remember.’
The thing smirked inwardly with self-satisfaction, and ejected away from the cocoon. The young woman had blacked out as soon as he had torn her consciousness of the whole incident of the present from her mind, and was now floating peaceably. The cocoon finished to reform and continued on its prior course, although at a much slower rate in both traveling, and building up that speed. She was obviously pursuing the Class B, but it would certainly be a while before she got close enough to catch up again.
The Class F laughed in its mind.
Let her return to her masters and report failure in annihilating an Lavoids, for she couldn’t harm the B. She’d have to return, or perish, and if she did, and if her masters were still alive then… If humans were indeed as uncaring as they were presumed to be, she would lose her life at their hands for sure.
The Lavoid was so caught up in these thoughts that it didn’t noticed it had not launched after the Class B, but had instead propelled itself on a different arc. It began to close its triple-pronged ‘eyelid’, setting a mental alert to be activated when it neared the Class B, or, in case of some sort of error, drifted too close to a planet.
As it drifted into hibernation, it began to wonder, though, on the intentions of the human… As to the reason she had slain Jenora. Before it passed into oblivion, one final thought crossed its mind.
…‘Why?’
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“That’ll teach you humans.”-Demona
GARGOYLES:
CITY OF STONE, PART I
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