“We are ready for you.”

  Joriah’s accomodations had undergone improvements since his meeting with the Shehzadi. The most significant addition was the new tablet he had received. While the device was still restricted from connecting with any of the cosmic information networks, it was stocked with information about recent developments across the galaxies. For Joriah, it was immensely helpful. After long years of seclusion, he had a lot to catch up on.

  He was absorbed deep in his explorations on industrial developments and changes in the power balance among the Irvanian conglomerates, when the door of his room slid open.

  The old guard from the day before was now accompanied by a younger one. Though age was difficult to tell for Kaiyaathians who lived for centuries, Joriah had spent enough time among them to infer the difference based on the extent to which their ears sagged and the difference in the luster of their dark skin. Between them, they dragged along another haggard, pale looking man whose hands were shackled behind his back. The guards’ expressions were more cautious and vary this time. Their maces remained inert, and they did not take any liberties with jokes.

  Joriah got up. He had no idea who the new human prisoner was, but he had his suspicions as to what fate awaited the man. He glanced at him once - the man stayed silent, but the expression in his eyes were screaming for help. Joriah turned his gaze towards the guards. Their grim postures signaled in no uncertain terms that it was not his problem. He stayed silent and walked out without questioning any further. There were heroes in the world, Joriah was not one of them.

  The high priest waited for him outside. “We are ready to get you out.”

  Even though the Kaiyaathians’ facial expressions were challenging to read, Joriah did not need any expertise in their alien anatomy to know that the smile on Madhab Al’Pasha’s face was obviously fake. Of course, he would never say that out aloud. The glimmering sol shard that the priest pressed onto his hands was all Joriah really cared about. “Congratulations, Joriah, you are now a free man!”

  “So, how does this work? Me free to walk out the front door?” He looked around suspiciously.

  “We need to be a bit more discreet than that,” the priest scowled. “The cover story will be that one of your companions from outside sneaked into my cohort of acolytes while I was visiting the prison to offer the inmates my blessings.”

  Joriah found that particularly funny because in his years of imprisonment, nobody ever came to visit him with an offer of salvation. But then, perhaps such facilities were reserved for the Kaiyaathians only. A human in a Kaiyaathian prison was an oddity. “This miscreant managed to sneak in a device that could camouflage your soul signature while you switched places. The criminal was eventually discovered and suffered a horrific fate, but you had already managed to escape.”

  “This accomplice of mine would be the gentleman who was escorted in, I assume?” Joriah glanced once towards the door behind him, “What did he do to deserve such a fate?”

  “Something treacherous, none of your concern.” The priest waived impatiently.

  Joriah mulled over the plan in his head. He didn’t like the narrative of either being rescued, or leaving behind a companion who had risked his life to free him, to die. But he kept his displeasure to himself. There was much at stake, and there was only so much you could get when negotiating with your captor. And the truth was, the Kaiyaathians did have the upper hand.

  As Joriah stepped out of the outer gate, the guard adjusted the virtual controls on the mechanical device strapped around his arm. The gauntlet like construct looked foreign in design - but that was not surprising. The Kaiyaathians had made their fortune by scavenging technologies from other races. Joriah looked around for any visible effect, but other than a gentle glow on the panel, whatever the contraption did was not visible to the naked eye.

  “So this device is real? It is actually possible to camouflage your soul signature?” He asked, picking up the gray garb of acolytes the other guard handed him.

  “If it weren’t, the security system would have eviscerated you already,” the priest replied, in a tone that clearly indicated that that was the outcome he would have personally preferred.

  Once Joriah changed into the ceremonial garb of San’h Jafath - the servants of the faith, Madhab Al’Pasha moved out. Three other identically clothed acolytes accompanied him as they followed behind the high priest. “No open communication beyond this point,” the acolyte to his right murmured, subtly pointing towards the recording constructs that dotted the ceiling at recurring intervals. Joriah silently nodded.

  They ascended the spiral staircase carved along the inner periphery of the dormant volcano, eventually stopping a few hundred feet below the opening on top. Joriah had no recollection of these steps - when he was brought in, he had been tortured to the point he was barely conscious. Travelling upwards, he had expected them to go all the way to the top, but instead they took a diversion through a corridor carved into the mountain. Once they traversed the length of the narrow passage, the guard gently tapped on a panel and a hidden gate, almost invisible, was revealed.

  Joriah followed behind the members of the faith as they navigated through the dark, dimly lit passageway that lied beyond. After what felt like hours of silent, laborious trudging, they emerged into a wide opening. Joriah noticed that at some point during their walk, the scent of the air had changed. The ever present odor of sulfuric aerosol around the volcano was gone, and the smell that now greeted him reminded him of varnish and antiseptics.

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  He also wondered why the decorations on the walls looked familiar - the building they had come out in, was clearly not the prison complex. Ornate statues, at least twenty feet in height, stood along the walls and the bustle of a crowd could be heard in the distance. The place was impeccably clean, and he could hear their footsteps echoing in the large space. In a few more minutes, the group arrived at a grand archway fashioned from colossal, luminescent crystals, and Joriah’s jaw hung open as recognition took root. This had to be the Laf’Yernath museum - one of the largest and most well-preserved collections of artifacts from the Yaskh culture.

  A labyrinth of exhibits was visible just beyond the archway, each dedicated to a specific aspect of the Yaskh culture and other civilizations they had close ties with. The only problem was that Laf’Yernath was in a planet three light years away from where the Kaiyaathian prison had been.

  “Did we just…” Joriah looked askance towards the acolyte to his right.

  The veiled acolyte gestured him to be quiet, “You must not ever mention about this wormhole to anyone.”

  Joriah could understand his trepidation. They had revealed to him a secret passageway that connected vastly separated worlds. He had mostly thought of wormholes as celestial phenomena, but now that he thought more of it, it would be entirely feasible to have a wormhole anchored to locations within a planet. How that worked out with planetary motions changing the alignments between the two points was something he was curious about, but now was not the time for an academic discussion.

  Above them, a gigantic skeleton of a prehistoric monster that the Abyssal Khanate had slain in a vicious battle was hung from the ceiling. A harmonious blend of bioluminescent organics and crystalline minerals, pulsed with an ethereal glow in shelves to their right.

  Silently weaving in through sparse groups of visitors, they emerged out of the building and arrived at a steep cliffside that overlooked a forest. A launchpad could be seen in a clearing about a kilometer away. Numerous flightcrafts awaited in standby mode, and a small group of guards seemed to be performing some sort of inspection. Joriah vaguely remembered that the famed museum did have a separate pad near the entrance for visitors. The one before them, in the backyard of the establishment, looked like a separate facility reserved for military use.

  The old priest gestured, and one of the Kaiyaathian ships rose up and glided towards them, its exterior shimmering with an iridescent sheen. The vessel’s outer surface was adorned with markings that pulsed with a mesmerizing rhythm, casting a faint glow around it. The craft’s overall design bore a striking resemblance to a cross between a rover and a dragonfly, with its large, translucent wings folding neatly against its body when not in use.

  Suddenly, a messenger came running and whispered something in the priest’s ears. The expression in his face turned grim, and activating his earpiece, he addressed the faujdar who navigated the vessel.

  “I must attend to some important business back in the Yae Tal’hefier, but please escort my acolytes to Kandara.”

  Joriah, of course, had no intention to venture into the capital city of the Kaiyaathian empire. Given the extent of security in the royal capital, he would have zero chance of coming out of there alive.

  The Madhab looked at him once and nodded slightly, his fingers brushing against the ceremonial blade that all Kaiyaathians carried. Joriah understood - the acolytes were getting sacrificed, as was the faujdar who steered the craft. From this point onward, Joriah was on his own.

  The logical part of his mind pushed him to keep quiet and follow the plan as laid out. It would be the safest thing to do. It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed before. It wasn’t like he hadn’t killed innocents before. But something deep within him, something primal, rebelled against the idea of the entitled old man walking away while his own followers were left behind to the mercy of an assassin.

  Giving in to his instincts, he lowered his hood. Immediately, all hell broke loose.

  “Hey, who are you?” The faujdar piloting the craft yelled out, alarmed.

  The soldier may not have known Joriah specifically, but a human among the acolytes of the Kaiyaathian faith stood out like a beacon in the dark. And the scars on Joriah’s face clearly marked him out as a man who had not led a life of comfort and compliance.

  In an instant, the vessel’s enormous plasma canon swiveled towards Joriah. A deep, resonant hum filled the air as the weapon charged up, building from a low throb to a high-pitched whine.

  The other acolytes panicked and screamed. But for Joriah, the last blademaster of the Yemeth elite force, chaos was an old friend. The acoloytes too all carried ceremonial blades with them, as mandated by the One Faith. Pushing aside the nearest one, he pulled out the blade from his scabbard, and hurled it towards the old priest who had just turned back in surprise. Flying true, the blade slashed him on the face, leaving a deep gash on his cheek.

  Even before the guard who accompanied him could activate his weapon, Joriah had crossed the gap between them. The strike had not been lethal. The ceremonial blades were not regularly sharpened, their significance was primarily religious. Still, given the force with which it had been thrown, a trail of crimson flowed down the priest’s immaculate robes.

  “Why?” the words had only begun to take shape on the Madhab’s lips when Joriah punched the guard in the face, pulled out his electric mace and plunged it into his neck. The same one that he had used on Joriah before. Unlike Joriah though, the guard had never been on the receiving end of his weapon. “I hope you find the experience rejuvenating,” he said, tossing the man off the cliff. But not before yanking off the gauntlet like construct he had strapped around his arm.

  Joriah's arm, thick and unyielding as iron, locked around the priest's throat with practiced efficiency. He backed away from the cliffside, dragging the Madhab along. The military craft did not dare to fire on the leader of the One Faith, and furious blaze rapidly building up inside the canon slowly dimmed down.

  “You will not get out of this alive…” The priest forced the words out, choking on Joriah’s stronghold. His fingers clawed desperately at the forearm that held him, nails scraping against coarse fabric and the harsh bristle of dark hair. Joriah's breath came hot against his ear. “We will see about that.” He dragged the Madhab back along the same path they had followed. Numerous alarms had already started blaring across the compound.

  The priest was fuming with rage, “You cannot lay your hands on me. The Sultenate will hunt you down. You will have nowhere to run.”

  “Oh, I have no intention of running away anywhere, Priest. Do you want to bet what the Royal family will do if I come back to Kaiyaath with Wyrmblood flowing in my veins?”

  The Madhab's vision began to blur at the edges, dark spots dancing before his eyes as his lungs burned for air. Behind him, he could hear the Kaiyaathian elite forces storming into the museum. Joriah inhaled the fresh air, deeply, for one last time before shoving the priest back towards the tunnel they had come out of.

  “But before that, let’s first find out just how dormant this volcano is.”