One really never knows when dealing with Power, whether it's Magic (Black or otherwise), Channelling/Psionics, SunPower, or something even more bizarre. Maybe there is something to this "Friday the 13th" business - or maybe it's just that so many people believe in it that their collective mindforce causes odd effects on the local Power. Whatever, Yago, like the other two members of this most unlikely triangular relationship, was summing up his life on Earth and not liking what he came up with!
He cursed this Sunforsaken planet, its crazy inhabitants, and the Society that had marooned him here. For good measure, he then did the same for its home-grown forces of Evil, who, fearing his to-them-alien SunPower and the strength it gave him, usually refused to cooperate in any of his plans. Or so he believed, partially correctly, partially out of the arrogance all would-be Evil Lords suffer from.
His thoughts turned to where it all began - and, from what he was told by others, it started pre-birth. Whether it was solely a chance combination of genes, a subtle mutation not understood by the Healers who watched over babies-to-be as they developed in the womb, or even the workings of a twisted Fate, he was apparently born "different". In a Society that prized harmony and balance above all else, "different" was not "good."
He was a restless Child, full of strange questions and stranger imaginings. Still, his examinations always came out in the "normal" range - borderline, but normal. (He should have been grateful for being born in a Mature Society, where Children were not the cruel animals they were in all Immature Societies, mocking and scorning the "different".)
As he passed into Adolescence, some of his characteristics strengthened. And what an odd combination they were! Aside from the standard traits of those who were destined for the Healing Profession, he had a very high Drive and a strong spirit of Adventurousness. A Leader was a theoretical possibility, but the various High Councils needed only a few from his Profession, and those they already had were all relatively young.
Fortunately, the Adventurousness offered an alternative - Missionary Healer. It was certainly a rarity for one so young to be set upon the path of what, to Eldebranis, was the most noble of Professions, but, in this case, "different" was good. So his Education and Training continued. So did his unusual development. As always, some form of therapy was considered and rejected. He stayed "normal" - barely - and anyway, he had a well-integrated personality. Tampering with it was unlikely to be successful, especially since he felt he was destined for greatness, and had no desire to change in any case.
In due course he attained Adulthood and began the high-level courses his Profession demanded. Naturally, that included various in-Space trainings - and that is where trouble started. He found himself faced with the reality of the immensity of time that celestial bodies exist in, not as an intellectual abstraction, but as a physical actuality, and he wished to participate in that reality.
Eldebranis, like the members other Mature Societies, were satisfied with a lifespan of a few hundred years, after which, having done enough, they were content to surrender their bodies and return to the Light and those who had gone on before. Yago lost that contentment, and with it, his Faith. Indeed he was different! Rare indeed was the non-Believing Healer, but a non-Believing Missionary Healer was truly unique! Still, religious freedom was a central tenet of Mature Society, and his lack of Belief was not a disqualifier.
Unfortunately, with that discontent came a desire to do something about it. He began cautious experiments with SunPower, not without success. However, he was a Healer, not a Scientist, and, inevitably, something went wrong. Fortunately, no serious damage was done, but the local Council pointed out the danger that he was posing to others. He was also shown certain data not given to most citizens, and it was then that he first learned of the Shadow Lands and their Evil inhabitants.
What the Lands were was unknown, but they were apparently alternate Planes of Reality. Those who inhabited them lived in an uneasy coexistence with normal Society - forays into the Shadow Lands by the Adventurous or the Dedicated inevitably were disastrous. Those few who returned had been either subverted to the Cause of Evil or driven insane beyond the powers of even the Great Healers to cure by what they had witnessed - and telepathic witnessing of Evil was far more vivid than those who have only their five senses could imagine!
Similarly, the Shadow Lords, unless invited, restricted their appearances on the Normal Plane to a few barren Light-forsaken spots - any expansion meant that most dreaded of Eldebrani words - war! And, as the Shadow Lords had learned through bitter experience, they were no match for a race that could call upon the direct power of the Sun. They apparently remained content to seize the occasional careless or corruptible victim. Apparently, they perverted SunPower to its negative, or Black form - all planets (and only planets) of SunChildren were infested by them - thus giving them an ability to affect normal matter far in excess of what a being made of Shadow would normally be able to. The concentrations of it Yago needed in his experiments represented a serious temptation to them. Did he wish to attract their attention, threatening not only himself but those near him?
He didn't, and reluctantly dismantled his equipment. Too late! Whether he had been truly born under an Evil fate or not, he had attracted the attentions of those Creatures, though he was as yet unaware of it.
He still remained discontented with the pitifully short lifespan he faced, and now strange thoughts appeared in the corners of his mind, whispering and suggesting. With no Faith to fall back on, he began to listen to them.
As he continued his advanced Training, he met most of the other Candidates at one time or another, and Bennu was one of them. Bennu, whose Sensitivity was exceptional, even by the demanding standards of Missionary Healing, felt uneasy in his presence. Neither of them knew why, and, from Eldebrani Society's point of view, much trouble would have been avoided had the Wise learned of, and acted on, Bennu's feelings. But he was only another Candidate and Yago was left to pursue his own path.
What Bennu had sensed, of course, was the Mark that the Shadow Lords had placed upon Yago. They had been attracted by his experiments and had read the desires in his mind. They watched him discreetly, whispered the Temptations of the Dark into his mind, and waited for the correct moment to take action.
One break period between courses Yago would never forget - and never regret. He was back at home, enjoying the Night and the Stars, when he suddenly found himself embarking on a journey of some hundreds of miles. It took several days, the last three of which were on foot, but he finally found himself standing at the outer threshold of a large circle of blasted terrain.
Outside, where he stood, the Sun blazed overhead and the birds twittered. Inside - it almost seemed as if Night had fallen. There were a few stunted, twisted plants, but no visible animals. Yet things scurried and scampered about. Even he shuddered. Did he really wish to give up all he had known for this? For Immortality! And to be a Leader and a Power - YES! His decision made, he boldly strode forward towards the center of the Circle. There he saw only two man-high slabs of a material so black that they seemed to be actually radiating darkness! And, as he learned, they were. The Unlight was made by perverting SunPower and turning it into its negation. Such were the principle tools of Evil Powers of all sorts - reverse Good to make Evil. Strangely, Good could not do a similar transformation, giving Evil a great advantage.
No words were spoken, but Promises were made by both parties and Oaths were sworn. Yago passed between the two slabs and into the Shadow Lands to undergo his Initiation. What actually happened is best not spoken of to those not Initiated and will not be written upon these pieces of paper, but when Yago passed back through the slabs and into the Normal Plane - the Land of Light - he no longer fully belonged to it. He returned to his home, took what he thought useful, moved deep into a forest in a dangerous seismic zone, and used the innocent training all Eldebranis received to create his dwelling place. He lived off the land and, as intended, was left alone to resume his experiments ...
Yago didn't know what they would think at the Training Center when he failed to return for his next class, but he found the thought of puzzling Bennu oddly satisfying.
(Bennu was more than just puzzled. Though all of the Candidates - to say nothing of the Teachers - found Yago's actions shocking - and highly Immature - he was an Adult, and had the right to withdraw from his Training if he so chose.
Bennu spoke to a few of his closest friends: "I fear Yago has followed a wrong Path, and much Evil will come of it." Then an Event truly rare even for the most highly Sensitive occurred. Briefly, the Gift of Prophecy descended upon him. "Some day - I do not know how or why - we will meet again, and I fear the encounter."
His friends scoffed: "What, on some planet lightunits from here? And you, Bennu, feel fear? That's not like you at all!"
Bennu: "I know, and that troubles me even more.")
Yago had chosen to accept the risk of an earthquake in exchange for the solitude his experiments demanded. He didn't know if Society would initially force him to stop, but they surely would when they learned of his plans! Perhaps he was as clever as he believed - he was rediscovering a mode of existence so ancient and obscure that it was not properly described even in the databanks of the Wise - the half-Shadow. He was as unwilling to surrender his bodily existence to Shadow as he was to Light, and was learning to use SunPower as an immortalizing agent. At the same time, he continued to visit the Shadow Lands for further training and could now pervert SunPower into its Black form, creating the Unlight. He learned how to make what amounted to magic potions by infusing the Unlight into various physical substances, including poisonous plants.
He Smiled. Let the Healers try to reverse the effects! With luck, the Unlight would feed back and poison the Healer ... the image of Bennu appeared to him. Yes, it would be most satisfying to make him a victim.
Yago had great plans indeed - to be a Lord not only of the Shadow Lands, but of Eldebran itself!
Though his experiments with immortality could be performed on animals, some of his potions required human test subjects. He'd captured a few on his treks to and from the Shadow Circle, and that proved to be his downfall. He was, after all, still experimenting, and one of his creations turned out to be less effective than he'd expected. While he was in the Shadow Lands, one of his subjects had recovered enough to escape and seek help.
He now learned the bitter lesson of the Shadow Lords - do not anger Eldebrani Society, for its massed power is great indeed. Perhaps in a few years he would have been unassailable, but his Powers were still weak. Now knowing what they were looking for, they were able to detect his SunPower experiments and triangulate his location. The first thing he knew was when he was struck by a Sunbolt. He called for help from his Shadowmates, but heard nothing more than a hissing Voice from deep in his mind: "You cannot win - yet. Keep this secret and even the Wise will overlook it." Then his memories of Shadow faded deep into his mind.
He defended himself skillfully, even though both seriously outnumbered and outPowered, and the fight raged on. There! One of his opponents had made a tactical mistake and allowed himself to be trapped in a small room. Dispose of this one and the fight would be more even. He stepped forward, passing a doorway as he did so.
A mindblanked figure raised a crude but effective weapon - a cylinder of dense metal - and brought it crashing down on the back of Yago's head. He awoke some time later to find himself a prisoner.
His next few weeks were a confused blur as a team of Healers - appointed by the Supreme Council of the Wise itself, no less! - studied his mind and his actions. Normally, it would have been easy to detect that he was an Intitiate of the Shadows, but his desire to keep his physical body blocked the usual physical changes. Similarly, his SunPower-strengthened mind allowed the Shadows a hiding place. The Healers reported that which they found, and that was disturbing enough.
The Wise made their decision. Yago was incurable - or, from his point of view, fortunately could not be forced into conformity with Society - and, in view of his great crimes against others, was ordered Removed from Society.
Great as his crimes were - and using others as laboratory animals in destructive experiments were indeed great crimes - his Society did not kill if it could be avoided. Survey and Contact Teams were being sent to an Immature planet. Exile in hibernation to it seemed like a good idea, especially since he could not survive on it for more than a few days unaided. Even if something went drastically wrong and he were Awakened, his body would die within a week without a SunPower transformer, and he wasn't going to be given one!
(Had the Wise known of Bennu's Prophecy before making their decision, their actions might have been different, but Bennu had spoken of it to only a few friends and there was no reason for any of them to be questioned by the Wise. But he never questioned what the term "Removal" really meant, and did not learn of his fellow passenger until he had arrived on Earth. Now he began to understand the words of his Prophecy, but it was much too late to do anything about it, and he soon joined Yago in the state of no-mind that hibernation was.)
Or should have been. Yago's mind kept silent and hidden until years after the Teams had left. Then it "woke up" and began to explore its new World. Alas for him, when he went to return to his body, he couldn't find it! It radiated nothing. Oh, well. He really had no need for it at present.
In fact, he spent the next several centuries painstakingly building a SunTrap in an Indian mound. Oh, it went slowly, bitterly slowly! Being disembodied made manipulation of physical reality nearly impossible, but finally he finished it. Outer plates of subtly altered matter "reflected" the Z-rays onto a central collector plate. This led the Power into a device resembling nothing so much as a spider web - with strands of that living blackness called the Unlight that he had wrought out of the SunPower he had captured, drop by precious drop - that Yago could now sit at the center of and slowly build up his mental charge. Finally, he could actually accomplish something!
His presence was at last felt upon Earth as he involved himself in some of the horrors of what the inhabitants called the 20th century. True, his power remained limited - he could only hold so much charge in his mind (though, at the expense not of recharging himself, he could condense the Unlight). And, not being able to perform significant physical miracles, he could promise little to the local inhabitants that he could deliver. Still, he'd made a few converts.
And then the inhabitants had discovered nuclear energy! It would do him precious little good to get a war started if he found himself left with a barren radioactive planet - and that's assuming neither his body nor his SunTrap were destroyed! He found himself wasting hard-won energy having to cooperate with equally resentful native Evil powers trying to keep a balance between Evil and total destruction.
And then he felt, deep within his mind, a familiar pattern. It faded away after a few minutes, only to return briefly most every day. Yago, deeply puzzled, went searching. Long months it took - and, of course, his search was interrupted by his need to recharge at intervals. Finally, he was near enough when he first felt it to track it down.
Yago had to admit it - NEVER did he expect to find Bennu! The pattern he felt was that of Bennu when he SunCharged. But then, it did make some sense - Missionary Healers were meant to be sent to planets of Immatures, and he'd obviously been Exiled to the one Bennu had been assigned to.
He reguarded Bennu's Phoenix Medallion with considerable interest. It was a highly portable and efficient Z-ray collector, and if he could get it, instead of having to spend weeks rebuilding his energies, he could do so in some minutes (it did take a short time to convert SunPower to Unlight ).
Some months and several battles later, he considered his options. The two of them were nearly evenly matched, and attacks on Bennu involved considerable risk to the integration of his mind as Bennu retaliated with Mindblasts of his own. He was cut off from the Eldebrani Shadow Lands and Lords, and certainly couldn't expect to draw on the Powers of rival Earthly Evil forces, to whom he had nothing to offer except himself as a threat.
Much as he'd enjoy killing Bennu, it was not the best plan. After all, he couldn't just pick up the medallion and carry it to the collector plate of the SunTrap. Even more enjoyable - and practical - would be winning Bennu over to Evil, though that was rather unlikely. Tricking him was the best compromise. Of course, he wouldn't actually turn down an opportunity to kill Bennu - and it would be most pleasurable! - he'd take his chances with the medallion. (He might have felt differently had he known that Bennu's death, at least while wearing his medallion, should automatically Awaken Mira. And she DID know where Yago's body was! What she might do with that knowledge when Yago first taunted her about Bennu's death could be disastrous to his plans ...) And he did control an enemy of Bennu - an Earthman who had literally blundered into him - and had set a lethal trap, but he had no idea of when it would spring. Still, if it worked, he would get his mind on that medallion. His hands, too, if he could relocate his body. Perhaps Bennu would have already done that for him. Alternatively, if he could trick Bennu into Awakening it - perhaps by causing Bennu to hallucinate it as Mira's and then faking an attack - he could rejoin and seize Bennu's medallion before Bennu could stop him. In either case, THEN he could be master of this planet and eventually return in triumph to Eldebran. Bold plans, perhaps, but the only part of the Future that belonged to the weak and the timid was the grave.
Bennu was proving difficult to subvert, but he'd expected that. Slaves of the Light were vulnerable only if their Faith failed - he'd freed himself that way! - but the longer things went with no success for Bennu, the better Yago's chances.
True, he could try materializing - Bennu would be caught well off guard, and probably have a hard time locating him, as he could bury his mind deep in the body. And he could try some of the Black magic he'd learned, too! And, being materialized, he could take the medallion with him to the SunTrap! Tempting indeed, but it would mean many months of storing charge and making a body out of the dust, and he really didn't want to leave Bennu unmolested that long. Bennu might get lucky and find Mira - or get unlucky and get captured. Finding the medallion could really difficult then! Why did life on Earth have to be such a problem?
He decided upon a compromise. He would now divert 10% of the Unlight into making a body - which, at that rate, might well take a year or two to finish, never mind the additional condensed Unlight he would need for Black Magic. He would also spend about 1/3 of his time looking for his real one. If he found it first, he could begin altering the whole site to mentally seem to resemble Mira's chamber - given enough time, the Evil aura Bennu would sense would appear to be caused by Yago's presence .... Perhaps he could even try to lure Bennu to the site - his pet human might be most useful, though he would have to suspend the trap. The rest of the time, he would continue his attacks on Bennu. Yes, that seemed to cover everything as best he could manage it.
Then, with a start, he realized that one certainly did have to be careful what one wished for. He wanted bodily immortality, did he? Well, it was already over 1000 years old, and he'd been conscious almost the entire time, and so far, he had remarkably little to show for all of his efforts aside from a large immovable device necessary for him to do anything more than observe life. Sometimes he though the Light really did know what he was up to, and was trying to teach him a lesson.
When he got in such a mood - like today - he knew what to do. He began thinking about Bennu ...
Copyright Nov. 26, 2000 Three Cheeks Productions (Richard Kaplan)