Absicon Universe: Queen Lucrecia's Shadow Epi.

Woohoo! Queen Lucrecia's Shadow (The first draft, anyway) is complete! Here is the epilogue. Hope you enjoy.

Dorian approached the bio-bed that Grey lay in. She was dying, he knew. The only thing that kept her alive was the residual electrical currents left over from Lucrecia's occupation of her body. She had asked specifically to see him.
"How are you feeling?" Dorian asked, after taking a seat. He knew the question was lame, but he didn't know what else he should say.
"Like I'm dying." Grey answered. She paused for a moment. "I was conscious the entire time that she possessed me. I heard the conversation you had with her. I heard her thoughts."
"Her thoughts?" Dorian asked.
"She's dangerous." Grey said. "She's afraid of us... of humanity."
"I gathered that." Dorian said. "What do you know about her? What do you know about her people?"
"I know that their natural form wasn't as an energy being." Grey answered. "They were humanoid. Right up until the Vendo'Rpah wiped them out, they were humanoid."
"What changed?"
"I don't know. I couldn't make sense of all of her thoughts." Grey explained. "What I did understand was that what she is now is like a shadow of what she once was." Grey leaned up towards him. "She died, captain. The Vendo'Rpah killed her – and look what she has become." She shook her head and rested it back on the bed. "She's afraid of us - afraid of our philosophies, our mindsets. She means to destroy us. All of us."
Dorian glanced at the array of monitors that were set up around Grey's bed. They had just begun to beep wildly, and Dorian realised that Grey had only minutes – maybe seconds – left.
"It's not your problem anymore." Dorian said. "You need to rest."
Grey grabbed his arm.
"I'm about to die, for god's sake." She snapped. "You need to promise me, captain, promise me that you'll stop her..." Her eyes grew wide. "Stop her before she kills us all..."
With that, she let out a gasp of air, and dropped back onto the bed, her eyes open wide. The monitors all began going haywire, and Dorian knew that she was dead. He stood up, and placed a sheet over her face.
Dorian left Klein to take care of Grey's body, and began the long walk up to the bridge. Upon reaching the bridge he sat in his command chair, and instructed the AI to alter the Amethystine's course. They were heading home.
As he stared out of the bridge's enormous windows he had only one thought – he had to make it home and stop Lucrecia. It seemed to Dorian that Humanity went from one crisis to another – humanity past was littered with conflict. From the crusades, to the world wars of the twentieth century to the Transnationals war of the twenty second century and finally the war with the Vendo'Rpah, Humanity had gone from conflict to conflict, and still they couldn't avoid it. Perhaps Lucrecia was right – perhaps war was what defined one. But even if she was right about that, she was still planning to destroy humanity, and she had to be stopped.
She would be stopped.


Well, that's it for Queen Lucrecia's Shadow. I hope you enjoyed the story. Let me know what you think (constructive criticism is always welcome) by leaving a comment on the blog, or sending me an e-mail at travisannabelauthor@hotmail.com. Next step is to have a few people read over it and do some editing, and then I'll be sending it off to Interzone magazine in the UK. Fingers crossed.

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. My next short story will be titled The War of Babylon, and will be set in the Absicon Universe, although it will be set well before everything else.

Thank you, and good night.