Interstellar: Exploring The Cosmos With My Anomaly System
Chapter 57: The Beginning Of War

Chapter 57: The Beginning Of War

The air in the vaulted chamber hung heavy with the scent of smoldering incense and aged straws. Sunlight filtered through the gaps with drawings depicting the Five Sacred Sigils—twin serpents coiled around a mountain, a crown of roots, and a star-strewn void—casting fractured emerald and gold light across the stained soil. The Aelvarian’s throne, carved from the petrified trunk of the First Tree, loomed like a skeletal hand, its gnarled roots snaking into cracks in the floor.

He was no mere ruler—he was a relic. His once-gilded armor, now dulled and pitted, clung to a frame gaunt from decades of war. Silver hair, streaked with ash, fell to his shoulders, and his eyes burned like molten iron. When he slammed his fist on the throne’s arm, sigils etched into the wood flared crimson, pulsing in time with his ragged breaths.

"Do you want to die!?" His voice cracked like a whip, echoing off walls lined with tapestries fraying at their edges—threadbare scenes of harvests and harmony, now stained with soot.

She stood rigid, her posture at odds with the delicate silver curls framing her face. Her clothing smudged with charcoal and something iridescent, hung open over a tunic of patched linen. But it was her eyes that unsettled him—lime green galaxies, pupils like collapsing stars, swirling with flecks of light that mirrored the forbidden sigils she studied.

"I’m short of people as it is!" The Aelvarian’s voice rose, raw as an open wound. "My men are rotting in the mud at the Eastern Pass—their lungs filled with the very toxins you dredged from the earth! Do you even comprehend the weight of a life?!"

Veira’s fingers twitched at her sides, fingers bruised from her physical experiments"Sacrifices are necessary for progress. They signed their lives off to die for this land how is this any—" she said, toneless.

The throne’s sigils blazed as he surged to his feet. "What?!" The word shook the air, dislodging dust from the rafters. "Foolish child! Progress?" He spat the word. "You’ve butchered the commandments, Veira. I keep you alive only because your poison might yet save us—but do not mistake mercy for weakness."

She lowered her head, her gray-streaked hair trembling faintly. A jagged scar peaked above her collar—a relic of an experiment gone wrong, he recalled.

"Don’t make me regret that call," he growled.

"Recite them," he hissed, slumping back onto the throne. His hand waving as if giving her the go ahead to start.

Veira’s voice rang hollow, as if reciting a funeral dirge:

"One must not tamper with the land,

One must not take more than what one needs from the land,

One must not seek power beyond the land’s gift,

Sigils are for royal blood alone,

One must—"

He silenced her with a raised hand. "And yet," he whispered, "you strip forests to fuel your furnaces. You bleed the soil for metals that scream when forged. You’ve drawn abominations from the earth, that kills life at a moment’s breath. Taking the souls of precious soldiers like starving hounds." His gaze dropped to her hands, where faint glyphs glowed beneath her skin—a crude imitation of royal sigils.

"And you play godhood with stolen power, for the mere chance of making your work easier. When the land dies... we die with it."

"Do. You. Understand. Me?" Each word was a dagger, sharpened by exhaustion.

Veira’s star-flecked eyes met his. She nodded once, a marionette’s motion. But her fingers curled inward, cradling a vial hidden in her sleeve—its contents swirling with the same impossible light as her gaze.

_______________________________________________________________________

"I’ll show them all..." Veira muttered, now in the distant future glowing vials of emerald and amethyst liquids pulsed like diseased hearts on cluttered shelves, casting jagged shadows across parchments scrawled with forbidden equations.

A cracked skylight revealed a sky choked with smog, the dim light filtering through to illuminate Veira’s latest creation—a bubbling vial of violet poison, its surface shimmering with oily rainbows.

The acrid tang of sulfur and burnt herbs clung to the air, mingling with the metallic whisper of machinery grinding in the corners.

with careful hands she poured an acidic liquid into a boiling vial, watching as it bubbled to the surface, its toxic purple hue sloshed around in the clear glass till it settled, a smirk appearing on the scientist’s face.

The door exploded inward, ricocheting off a rusted cauldron. Freya strode in, her grin sharp as a dagger.

Behind her loomed Godric, his scarred arms dragging Tanaka—a broken figure in tattered robes, his face a mosaic of bruises and dried blood.

"Veira, we’re back!"

Freya announced, kicking aside a cracked alembic.Veira whirled, a snarl twisting her lips. "How many times must I bleed the word ’caution’ into—" But her anger faltered as she took in Tanaka’s ragged form.

"Yeah yeah, whatever. we found this guy by the village!" Freya announced Leaning against a table, toying with her staff as Godric dropped him, he was conscious but weak, panting and bloodied.

"But we couldn’t find the girl anywhere," He continued, his voice filled with strain and effort. "But they should be on their way to rescue him,"

"You weren’t followed, correct?" Veira pondered, looking to Tanaka for an answer.

"No one followed us, although there was this weird neo wolf roaming the midpass forest recently," Freya interrupted.

Veira chuckled as she walked up to Tanaka, kneeling to one knee by his side, her deer cloth pants grazing against the grim filled floor. She reached out, her fingers digging into the former chief’s hair, pulling him up to look her in the eye. A wicked satisfied smile, one that didn’t reach her eyes.

"Well then, guess we have work cut out for us, for when your friends arrive."

"You ready, Zelr?" Astra pondered, fixing the bag onto her back. They stood in the middle of the forest, the leaves dancing around them with the gentle sway of the breeze. Zelr nodded, his gaze snapping to Lailla who remained nestled on his shoulder, her wound patched but the girl still remained unconscious.

Astra smiled, looking ahead once more, watching as what seems to be reality warping right before them. Beneath Astra’s boots, the earth trembled faintly, as if recoiling from the jagged tear in reality—a pulsing violet portal that hissed like a thousand serpents. Its edges frayed into spectral tendrils, licking hungrily at the surrounding trees, leaving bark charred and weeping black sap.

The portal’s core throbbed like a diseased heart, its purple hues deepening to voids where stars winked in and out of existence. Shadows writhed within, shapes too fluid to be human—or mortal. A low, discordant hum vibrated in their bones, a sound that made Zelr’s teeth ache and Lailla whimper in her unconsciousness.

"Hold her tighter," Astra murmured, though she wasn’t sure if it was for Lailla’s sake or Zelr’s.

The portal spat them into a void so absolute it felt less like darkness and more like unbeing. No ground, no sky—only an endless obsidian plane that swallowed light, sound, and breath. The air hung thick and stagnant, carrying the taste of iron and burnt hair. Astra’s crescent pendant flickered faintly, its glow reduced to a sickly ember, as if the void itself fed on magic.

Zelr watched in awe and confusion at what was happening, his gaze darting around the void as though he was losing his mind, only to feel a tap on his shoulder.

He turned to Astra who pointed to the other end, an opening not too far on the other end. Zelr nodded and followed, the two of them pushing through the portal eager to leave, before stumbling back into reality, both gasping for air as soon as they had the chance.

"Welcome," A familiar voice called her gaze looking up to see Belk and Vagnis grinning from ear to ear, Celi sitting right by the portal and wagging her tail.

"You made it," She announced, her voice no less robotic than before. Astra smiled and nodded her eyes landing on Belk.

"Where are we..." Zelr pondered, watching as Astra stretched to the densely covered sky, the trees around them overshadowing every bit of light.

"We’re deep in enemy territory at the minute, the midpass forest," She announced, "Celi scouted this place out for us, it’s a blind spot of theirs."

"Did you bring everything?" She pondered, watching as the scientist’s face grew more serious, nodding along with her question.

"Yeah, though it wasn’t easy making that stuff from scratch you know," He complained, digging his hands into Celi’s fur and pulling out an arrangement of things.

’I forget she has an inventory—’ Astra thought to herself as she went through it all.

"Well I appreciate it," She reassured.

[Molded iron, copper, beakers and limestone.] An identifier popped up on the side of her screen, the young technician grinning at the sight of it all that pooled by her hands.

"What about the village?" Vagnis pondered, his gaze filled with concern for the carnage back home.

"It’s the perfect chance for an upgrade." Astra announced, the Aelvarians looking at her with confusion at her words.