Chapter 466 (2/2)

Thelni'ista nodded, swallowing. ”That you were there to lay a burden upon his shoulders if he was willing.”

The glittering Terran smiled. ”Yes,” he became serious. ”I am here, Thelni'ista, to lay a great burden upon you, should you be willing to shoulder it.”

Thelni'ista nodded. ”I am afraid, but willing.”

”My child, fear is natural, normal,” the glittering being said. ”You are suited to shoulder this burden as you already carry it and labor on its behalf,” he said. He took her hand. ”Are you willing to accept this burden in my name, for your people, as you carry it now?”

Thelni'ista thought about it. ”What of Elisha'anti and Emthe'ees, what of my podlings?” she asked.

The glittering Terran took her hand with his other hand. ”I would not ask you to give them up. They need you, your strength and your love.”

She thought for a long moment, looking around herself.

”I accept this burden,” she said.

”Then I name thee Thelni'ista the Widow, the Loving One,” the glittering being said. He stood up and looked down at her, gently tugging on her hand. ”Come, walk with me,” he said.

”We have much to discuss.”

Thelni'istra stood up.

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The scars from the war had been eased and smoothed away. The wooded glade held no clue of the desperate fifteen hour firefight that had gone on when the jungle had revealed the largest and most powerful of the creatures it had bred. Gone were the tanks of 3rd Armor and 8th Infantry. Gone were the hastily dug in fighting positions that had sheltered the combatants as they struggled bitterly against foes who sought only to devour. No more pools of Precursor Autonomous War Machine acid, lubricant, and hydraulic fluid. No more shattered armor embedded in the ground.

Now it was peaceful. Warm in the sunshine, hauntingly beautiful in the night. There were tree boles, ferns, and soft moss where podlings would often play.

There was no clue as to what had gone on here.

Only memories and official records remained.

Cel-ebrim-bor-277 moved silently among the plants, caring for them in strange ways that often involved whispered incantations and gentle touches. He was graceful, long of limb, a handsome face that somehow appealed to all species, with ancient compassionate eyes. His long golden hair was bound up in a complex arrangement and held in place by a golden circlet decorated with green enameled leaves.

He was a wood elf.

And he had been born whole.

He remembered what had happened here. How he had fought next to the Telkan and Terran soldiers, facing the obscene and vile creatures spawned by the twisted jungle that perverted nature. He remembered the way his sword had flashed in the staccato light of muzzle flares. How the creatures had screamed and thrown themselves at the defenders in a fury made all the more intense by the resistance of Cel-ebrim-bor and the others.

The wood elf paused, gently caressing a smooth covering of moss over a jagged rock. The rock was pockmarked, cracked here and there, by the weapons of the Defilers. He could remember ducking down behind the rock, taking cover next to a Telkan Marine as the Marine had waited an extra second for his weapon to cool.

To Cel-ebrim-bor this place was near to holy.

He moved around the trunk of a massive tree that reached up into the sky. Where he sat and read the Great Book of Creatures Great and Small and the Tome of Root and Leaf next to where he had once fallen, next to those he had fought as a brother, was on the other side.

When he parted the branches and leaves of one of the bushes protecting the glade he stopped.

There, on one of the patches of moss, sat a Terran made of glowing and twisting code. Laying next to him on the soft blue moss, her head in his lap as she silently wept, was a Telkan female dressed all in black.

Cel-ebrim-bor recognized the glittering figure. How could he not?

He also recognized the weeping figure.

Silently, he summoned his brothers and sisters and alerted his mother, the Queen.

They gathered, moving as only an elf could through the brush, and watched quietly. Cel-ebrim-bor's sister brought his sword and armor and helped him dress.

In the glade, watched over by wood elves and powerful elven sorceresses, the Digital Omnimessiah comforted The Widow.

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The hospital's eVI was pretty robust. As close to a digital sentience or artificial intelligence as an enhanced virtual intelligence could be. It had even learned basic emotions during the years it had worked as the hospital's eVI.

Still, he was unsure what to do.

The glittering figure of a Terran was in the Master I/O Port Signal Junction. It wasn't doing anything as far as the eVI could tell.

Just watching the feeds from the NICU, the Maternity Ward, and pediatrics.

He would often say ”Hello, little one” and ”I see you, little one” and ”welcome little one” to those we would watch over.

The eVI considered it all.

When he had been the eVI of the Emergency Medical Clinic at the Refugee Base, he had once seen a severely wounded Telkan touched by other Telkan and all of them vanishing in a puff of purple smoke.

There were things in the meat world that defied simple explanation.

Why shouldn't there be strange things in the digital world also?

He merely notified the proper authorities and went to check the emergency room.

If the glittering Terran wanted to watch over children, well, who was he to stop them?

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”How many sightings?” Brentili'ik asked.

Her assistant, a Rigellian female by the unusual name of Martha Bennet, consulted her datapad again.

”Nearly thirty, just today,” she said. She made a flicking motion toward the desk and the holoemitter popped on, showing a rotating band of pictures.

Brentili'ik watched as the pictures went by. Security cam footage, social media posts, hospital eVI alerts. All of them showing the same glittering picture.

”Is it some kind of prank? A virus?” Brentili'ik asked.

Bennet shook her head. ”I checked SolNet, it's happening all over Confederate Space,” she looked down at her pad again. ”Even the Leebawians had a manifestation. A visit to someone called Ukk-uk-huk, who's apparently something of a local hero, as well as a manifestation to the largest chapter of the Word of Jawnconnor.”

Brentili'ik stared for a long moment.

”The Terrans are gone, but their digital deity manifests itself now? Not when they needed him, but now?” she said softly. She looked at Bennet. ”What does it mean?”

Bennet shrugged. ”Perhaps it means that we are all still together, that just because the Terrans are gone does not mean we are alone again?”

Brentili'ik just nodded.

”These are strange times,” she said softly.

On the holo-emmiter the vision of the Digital Omnimessiah comforting The Widow burned brightly.