Chapter 1: The Precept
I am the son of my Maker. I will do as she commands.
The precept reverberated through my skull, the words comforting, like an oily ilipus salve provided to numb pain. But there were some pains too deep for even ilipus to reach, or for the reassuring cadence of the creed to quell.
I stared at the ceiling from my sleep pod, hands folded neatly over my abdomen even while my thoughts were in a tangle. Unwanted memories roiled behind my oblique black eyes.
“Rhelian!”
My brother’s voice echoed through my head, and I flinched slightly as I recalled what it sounded like for him to speak my name.
“I am innocent of any wrongdoing! Deep in your essence, I know you know this. Deep down, you must know that the Maker’s words are a poison!”
“No, brother,” I had said, refusing to even look him in the eye. “Your words are the true poison.”
A slow, deliberate breath left my lungs as I sat up from my resting place. “I am the son of my Maker,” I spoke into the silence, distracting myself from my unchecked introspections. “I will do as she commands.” Standing from the bed, knowing sleep would continue to escape me, I recited more of the precept. “Pain is honor. Pain is privilege. To embrace it is to be elevated in the eyes of the Maker.”
I nodded to myself, satisfied, and turned to face the window of my small sleeping quarters. As I did this, my brother’s face invaded my thoughts once more, seeming to reflect back at me from the glass. The memory struck me before I could fight it.
My brother, on his knees, lifted his eyes to meet mine. His features were polluted with dismay as his light, his nimbus, was extinguished at the hands of the Maker.
My breathing grew shallow. I reached one slender arm behind me, trailing my three-fingered hand over the hard, perfectly round protrusion nestled between my shoulder blades. It was warm to the touch, unlike the rest of my greenish-gray skin. Every Va’nu was born with this disc of scale-like, translucent material, a receptacle for our essence. The nimbus was the most sacred part of our physical form, as well as the most vulnerable. If destroyed by force, death would soon follow. But, worse still, if our essence was to be corrupted by poor judgment and lack of principle, then it was the Maker’s duty to correct it.
I forced my hand back to my side, fingers curling into a fist. Then I swept out of the room, stalking down the narrow, dimly lit hall to my ship’s bridge. I sat and waved my hand over the console, a thin display of off-white light appearing to hover before me. As I studied the data to determine my journey’s progress, my hand faltered as more intrusive thoughts circled my mind.
Extinguished. That had been the fate of my traitorous brother. He was a failure, and he faced the consequences. He got what he deserved. That was what I had told myself. Yet, his face, moments before death, still haunted me after all this time.
Catching myself, I felt my hands clench into fists again. This ship is too quiet, I thought. Too much space for thinking.
“Pain is honor,” I reminded myself aloud. This pain I felt, the ache of loss, was merely a means to an end. It would inspire me along on my mission. But I couldn’t allow it to distract me.
I could not fail. I refused to follow the defiant path of my brother. In my mind, there was only one correct path, and that was the one the Maker had set before me. Her will was my commitment. Her word, my confidence. Even if I did not understand it...
“I must be made to understand. I must surrender self to serve.”
I relaxed in my seat a little at the words. That was why I had been selected, after all. My willingness to serve, no matter the cost. My understanding of the precepts, and of the importance of the Maker’s work, was why I, out of many other skilled contenders, had been chosen as the next vassal to carry her retribution forward.
“Honor the Maker,” I whispered, finishing my recitation.
That was the precept, the great creed by which all Va’nu lived. To live by anything outside of the Maker’s doctrine was a mark of shame. To fall to that dark place, to betray the code, was a fate worse than death.
I lifted my dark eyes to the window, staring down the vast emptiness of space before me. The eternal black canvas was interrupted only by a scattering of stars. In the distance, my destination; a dismal excuse for a planet, with its scarce green and blue patches dispersed between stretches of decaying yellow, all orbited by one bleak, gray moon.
