Chapter 82 – You are

<~Catherine's POV>

The monsters of the Void are simply gargantuan. Out in the empty space, it would be impossible for a human to measure them without a reference. For human telescopes, a fairly complex set of equations involving their size on the screen, the lens' focus, and more parameters, calculating it is simple.

An AI trained to deal with that kind of data returns these results, and multiple more, in a fraction of a second.

Diameter of the largest creature estimated at over ten kilometers. Total number greater than a thousand. Speed relative to the galaxy core almost double the stars at the relevant radius.

The data rolls through the screen, and then it refocuses on another object. Its size is too small to capture with any detail, but the AI extrapolates and estimates. Color in the shades of yellow, size between one and a half and two meters. Irrational human resemblance, it decides based on quick simulations.

Speed relative to galaxy core, two meters per second; the AI returns an abnormal value, suspicion of calculation error. Detailed analysis returns zero point zero three meters per second. Repeated again and again the background, they bring the result closer and closer to the final verdict.

Zero.

Suspicions of error do not stop, but all calculations point towards that result without fail. Shelved for further analysis it gives space for more data.

Before that goes anywhere, one of the creatures disappears. One moment it is there, and another there is nothing. Not a visible trace remains to base any theories on.

Following that, as the AI still returns error after error trying to explain the event, there is a blinding flash of light. It comes from the unmoving shape opposing the monsters, throwing all the cameras into disarray as they try to adjust to its brightness, only to disappear a moment later.

As the image comes back into focus, it is revealed the closest few creatures are hot to the point they're shining in the visible spectrum. The AI judges light is the source of the damage, as it roughly matches what modern weaponized lasers do to matter - not that there is a lot to go off of with the telescopes far on the end of the star system and the targets only a few dozen meters wide.

After that outburst, the situation quiets down. The presumed human - as absurd as that claim sounds - remains unmoving in place, and the creatures continue advancing, although some of them alter their courses slightly.

The calm stretches on, for ten seconds, twenty, then for a minute.

Then the video goes black.

A series of quick tests confirms the equipment is working as it should, but before the AI can deeply analyze the cause, the image comes back. It is merely not even close to the last frame.

Dark fragments of what seems to be flesh, black drops of liquid, invisible bends and tears that move and shift the starry background. All in a dizzying variety of shapes, sizes, positions, and speeds. All looks like a fantastical battlefield, with remains floating around aimlessly and dregs searching like stray fish in a shipwreck.

All that is framed by a pale yellow, irrationally unmoving outline. It covers the place from up and down and back and obscures the view from the front slightly, so the AI zooms out briefly to ascertain what it is dealing with.

A pair of hands. Impossible. Once again, and a woman made out wisping flame in revealed, holding the remnants of the battle in her has as if God observing its creation.

The AI analyzes and returns more and more features. They have never been seen on this scale, but they are all familiar.

Digitigrade feet ending in three large claws. Wide hips, long tail winding around long legs. Slim waist, generous bosom, arms cradling the speck of space in clawed hands. Wings emerging from the back and folded there. Curved black horns as if devouring light, with vividly glowing ridges resemblant of dragons' belly.

The face, for a moment, is not visible, even though it should since the whole... being, is transparent.

Then the head turns, ever so slowly with the momentum of a solar flare and inevitability associated with the divine. It is, indeed, a being, the AI decides, even though not a single logical explanation for its existence is found.

Then the head turns, revealing the contours of the face beautiful like an image of just one human perfection and yet inexplicably different, impossible. Its expression carries no emotion, not a mote of starlight making it up moves, yet it pressures like the presence of a deity.

Its eyes move. For a single, infinitely long second, they move from an undefined point in space to the telescope. Twin abyss gazes, full of stars, red, black, incandescent, full of colors, they see, they know, they understand they draw they allure they disgust they crush they build theydestroytheymendtheysetrightloveare

Catherine screams feeling a pull on her side that sends her tumbling in disorientation, and she doesn't find out where gravity wants her before she slams hard into something and sharp pain blooms in her forehead.

She lies there for a long while as sounds and voices roll around, but they are muffled, irrelevant in the pain and... detached, in a way that doesn't make sense, and yet that seems normal. Doesn't make sense because there's no reason for it, and seems normal because there's nothing wrong.

There's nothing wrong, it hits her with a sudden spike of clarity.

She freezes at that, and slowly, carefully, tries moving through the pain. It's all normal. As it should be. It's all...

I'm Catherine. There's a hiccup in my chest and my arms snap to my front. Small, lean, and small mounds. Then to the top my head. Ears, soft, covered in fur, huge. Then to my tail.

My tail! I have a tail! I scramble up at the thought and I bang my head on something again.

Ow.

I put my hands over my head as my ears lay flat against it, and I rub it a little, sitting in place. Damn, that hurts.

"Uh, Cathie?" I hear from above me and I growl impatiently, but then it hits it's Xethu and my little heart does that weird flip and I open my mouth to apologize.

Wait. I growled. Right, I've a tail, ears, I'm a Wolfkin, so I can growl, right... no. My eyes blink open at the weirdness and I look around. Around my room.

My room.

On Gaia.

I turn to Xethu, who is standing a meter away and on the other side of a tea table, who looks at me with mouth for a flytrap.

Then I turn to my body, my very own small, cute, soft, strong body covered in midnight black fur, most of which peeks out of the absolutely oversized shirt I'm in.

"Uh." I answer, then my brain hitches on that voice. On my voice.

I blink a couple of times.

"Um. I have questions." I declare.

...

<Helia's POV>

When I pull to a stop next to Cathie's house deep in the alleys of the Middle layer, in a shade of towering skyscrapers packed and connected together so tightly and with so many bridges and walkways they might as well be a single solid block, Derrie looks paler than usual.

Might have to do with the way I was driving. Not quite breaking any rules, but skirting around them in a way that would have landed us in a couple of accidents if I was a normal person.

Truly, what can some little nudges to our momentum do.

"Helia?" The spirit asks, and I turn to her with raised eyebrows. She's just dismounting the bike, and looking at it with a frown. "I trust you wouldn't get us killed, but what the hell is up with your driving? That didn't look... normal."

I grin. "Long story short, energy manipulation has a lot of uses. Should we be focusing on that though?"

She stays silent for a while, turning to Cathie's house located on a honeycomb-like wall of apartments, in one of the lower rows. Most of the higher ones are obscured by walkways and all, but hers is clearly visible, painted bright blue next to a number of differently shaded hexagons. The whole construction reminds me of what we've seen on Tau Ceti f, but it's packed drastically more tightly, with each apartment shaped like a trapeze around ten meters in width.

"Yeah, let's not. I'll have time to dissect it later." She nods.

"You think?" Letty muses, then smirks and glances at me.

I only puff out some air and smile, leaving the bike to find a parking spot.

Derrie's gonna have way more to do than she realizes in the coming months, when she internalizes that the sheer amount of knowledge humans have about VOW and everything in it, which would normally take tens, if not hundreds of years to learn, is just a drop in the ocean compared to what has been hidden. Way more islands on Neva are inhabited than humans think, and that ring is just one of a huge number of inhabited stars, if not by life as humans know it, then by other, much different forms of intelligence.

Not to mention stars themselves, not to mention other universes.

Speaking of stars, one approaches Cathie's house with a grin on her face.

Did the girl get better acquainted with a certain demoness since I last saw them? Not sure how far they have progressed or if they did at all, but the way they hold each other can be interpreted in multiple ways. And she's a wolf!

That... would have been a surprise if I did not have a vague recollection of causing that about a hundred and twenty years in the future from this place. As it stands, it just kinda hits me that I caused it. That I can do so much because I simply want to. It's a... weird feeling.

Aaah, but that's enough peeping. It's kinda unconscious now. There's a big open talk just around the corner, so I figure they're gonna say it if there's anything to say.

"Robert and David are already here." I tell the two walking next to me and looking down into the mess of the city below us, over the railing. "...Jake's also here."

"You don't- ah." Derrie sighs. "Well, it was supposed to be a little surprise, I guess? Robert thought that we're meeting up, so might as well invite the rest, and Jake conveniently had free time." She sucks on her lip for a moment. "It didn't go quite like we thought, huh."

I only nod my head, as we're just by the door, and I ring the bell. It's quickly answered, and Xethu's voice sounds out.

"Derrie?"

"It's me, with company." The girl answers. Seems she was expected. What about me though? I don't think they wouldn't connect the dots seeing us three...

"Come in then, we're in the living room."

The door clicks as soon as the quick exchange ends, and we step inside, though Derrie steps up first, giving me a look.

Don't do stupid shit, got it. She'll handle the first three seconds.

We pass a tiny antechamber and enter the living directly, revealing a fairly small, cozy space with a number of blue and pink jelly cushions strewn about, all illuminated by a large, flat lamp on the ceiling. The walls open up on the left side to the kitchen and on on the right side to a small corridor with stairs and doors, but those are not what we focus on.

The moment we enter, four heads swivel and lock on us. Cathie's still curled up on Xethu's lap and doesn't seem to register anything, instead radiating an aura of happiness.

The four, that is Xethu, Jake, Robert, and David, all four stare in silence as if they've agreed on it in advance. Derrie looks between me and the group, then sighs. I only grin at that.

"Nice to see you all. You probably guessed already, but that's Helia... and that's Letty." She adds the last part as my girlfriend steps in after us and gives a small wave.

The room erupts in questions and exclamations as soon as Derrie's voice fades, and I laugh at the four different questions that fly almost at once and all make so much noise it's impossible to tell who said what, then it gets weirdly quiet and each of the group looks between each other as if asking wordlessly to to speak first.

"What's all the ruckus-?" Is the first voice that breaks the silence, and it comes from none other that Catherine, who looks around blearily as if she woke up ten seconds ago, which is probably what really happened.

Her eyes rest on me, and she freezes for a long moment. Then she sniffs the air, shudders, and lets out a massive breath of air; I can't quite tell if it's one of relief or something else as she deflates on Xethu's lap, staring absently somewhere around my legs as she lays on her side. "Oh, it makes sense now..."

She receives a total of five confused looks. This time Derrie joins in. I, meanwhile, do have a pretty good idea what she means. The girl had always had good intuition, and I can only assume becoming who she is now only amplified and developed that. And if I'm right, then she should be able to sense the power, a sort of presence coming from me.

"Cathie? What do you mean?" Xethu is finally the first to ask, and the Wolfkin looks up, still with her head on the demon's thighs.

I'm tempted to make a comment, but I refrain.

"Yeah, like, don't you feel how strong she..." Cathie's voice trails off and she blinks. She shots up to a sitting position, pats her legs, then her cheeks, then she blinks and frowns at me. Then she tries to focus on something in front of her, and suddenly looks up at me with a weird expression. A mix of realization, shock, and confusion, I'd say, but that soon melts and she flops back onto Xethu's lap. And stays there.

"God damn." She concludes.