Wanderer Ch 40: Council Of Those Who Wanderer!

(Jack)

Everything was on fire.

Okay—not literally everything—but enough of the ship was sparking, groaning, and leaking smoke that it felt like the universe was trying to cook me alive in a metal oven someone forgot to calibrate. I slammed a palm against a console that had just started flashing symbols I definitely couldn't read.

"Dammit!" I shouted, as another panel blew out with a puff of purple smoke that smelled like burnt batteries and toasted cheese. "Why is everything in this ship in an alien language?!"

I slapped a red button. The ship groaned.

I hit a blue button. Something hissed.

I hit a green one—too late—and suddenly I was yanked forward as the ship snapped out of hyperspace, flinging me into real space like a drunk man being tossed out of a bar.

My head snapped back against the headrest as my stomach caught up three seconds later. I blinked hard, trying to focus, and that's when I saw it.

A planet. Huge. Burning orange and angry-looking, like someone had smeared a blood orange across the cosmos and said, That'll do.

"Please be a friendly planet," I muttered.

As if answering me, the ship started pulling downward toward it.

"No, no, no—you are not dying on me now, you piece of space junk!" I shouted, slamming more buttons in blind hope. A few of them sparked back at me. One of them shocked my hand.

"Ow! Son of a—!"

The ship groaned louder, like it was offended.

Then the flames started. Atmospheric reentry. The outer hull lit up like a meteor—because that's basically what I'd become. A flying, flaming hunk of "I really hope this isn't how I die."

I yanked on a lever that looked vaguely like it was for stabilization. The ship tilted. Sideways. Very sideways.

"Level off! Come on, baby, you can do this. Stay with me!" I begged, gripping the handles with white knuckles, wrestling the controls like I knew what I was doing. (I didn't, for the record.)

Below me: endless desert. Dunes. Rocks. A landscape that looked like it had never heard of the word "hydration." There was no water, no shade, and certainly no space bar for a good drink.

The ship came in hot. Like, crater-making hot.

It hit the sand in a violent boom, throwing me against the harness. Every bone in my body rattled as the entire thing bucked, skidded, and tore a canyon through the dunes.

Then—mercifully—it stopped.

The silence that followed was eerie. Except for the ticking of cooling metal and the distant hiss of steam, it was quiet. Too quiet.

I groaned and unclipped myself from the seat, then slammed a boot into the cracked glass of the cockpit until it gave way. The windshield crunched, and I tumbled out face-first into hot, gritty sand.

Hot. Really hot. Sun-beating-on-your-neck-like-a-hammer hot.

I rolled onto my back and just lay there for a second. Breathing. Alive. Barely.

"Well," I muttered, coughing a little, "that was not a smooth landing."

I sat up, brushing sand off my face and shirt. I looked around. Desert, as far as the eye could see. No signs of civilization. No other ships. No giant titanic women peering at me through the void, thank god.

"Where am I?" I asked, more to the wind than anyone else.

That's when I saw it.

Far off, on the shimmering horizon—something was moving. A shimmer. A blur. A shape. Too far to make out clearly, but definitely there. Coming closer.

My heart thumped.

"What the hell is that?"

I squinted.

Could've been a sandstorm. Could've been a vehicle. Could've been something worse.

One thing was for sure—my luck hadn't exactly been great so far.

I staggered to my feet, dusted myself off, and reached back into the crashed ship to grab the emergency kit. Not because I knew how to use most of it, but because having something felt better than nothing.

The shape on the horizon was definitely getting closer now.

"Alright, Jack," I muttered to myself, "time to find out if this planet wants to kill you... or just give you a warm welcome with sand in places you didn't know you had."

And with that, I started walking.

Toward it. Because of course I did.

Because running wasn't really an option anymore.

***

(Thalassa)

I closed my eyes, letting my body drift weightlessly through the starless rift Eris had carved for us—a temporary void, quiet and cold, untouched by the pull of time or gravity. My sisters, Eris and Eclipsa, floated around me, their towering forms dimmed, softened in the darkness like dormant suns. For the first time in a long time, I felt... small. Not weak. Just aware of the enormity of what I was about to do.

I inhaled slowly, the breath meaningless but grounding. Then I reached inward—past the fury, past the frustration of Jack's escape, past the endless silence of deep space—and deeper still into the place I kept sealed for eons. My center.

The darkness within began to peel away, replaced by flickers of distant glimmers—stars blooming into existence, not real, but conjured, imagined, a representation of the mental plane we used when the universe was still young and we still called to each other across lightless voids.

I let out a long exhale, the stars sharpening into clarity until I was surrounded by our old meeting ground—a realm untouched by physics, full of dancing lights with no bodies, only presence. Only us.

"I call to you," I whispered.

The lights remained silent for a breath.

"I, Thalassa, daughter of collapse and flame, call to my sisters—the Wanderers, the Titans, the Firstborn of Starborn Chaos."

And then—they came.

One by one, twenty lights blinked into existence, flaring into view like awakened nebulae. Each pulsed with its own rhythm, its own essence. I recognized them not by shape or sound, but by feeling—auras that echoed in my chest like old songs.

There was a silence. Not cold, not angry—just the silence of things ancient and vast waiting to understand why they'd been stirred.

Then, a voice rang out—sharp, silken, and undeniably familiar. "You summon us for... what? To chase some little mortal flickering between molecules?" The light pulsed a gentle violet. "Surely, Thalassa, your time is better spent unraveling galaxies, not chasing stardust."

I smiled despite myself. "Velantheris," I said, naming her. "Still the same, after all these eons."

She didn't deny it. Of course she wouldn't. She was proud of her cynicism.

Before I could answer, Eris spoke up beside me, her voice deeper, slower—like rolling thunder in a sealed dome. "Thalassa believes this mortal may hold the key to our origins."

That got their attention.

The lights dimmed, subtly. A ripple moved through the void like a question unspoken.

Origins.

Even we, for all our strength, for all our fire and cosmic might—we didn't know. We felt ourselves into being. We remembered only the darkness, and the moment we were. The universe didn't birth us. We simply awoke.

And ever since, that question lingered like static in the back of our minds: Where did we come from?

A new voice rang out, this one gentler, curious. "What does he look like, this mortal?"

I focused. "I'll show you."

I pushed the image forward from my mind—not just Jack's face, but the entire feeling of him. His stubborn glare. His ridiculous human smirk. The sharp brown eyes that always looked like they were figuring things out. The scuffed jacket, the cocky little stance he took like he wasn't a microbe compared to us.

I poured it all out.

His defiance.

His fear.

His strange, cosmic resonance.

A moment later, the lights responded.

"I see," one said flatly.

"How cute!" another chimed, her light dancing in a mock twirl.

"Hm," another uttered, unimpressed or perhaps too intrigued to speak more.

But I felt it—beneath their amusement, their curiosity—the flicker of something else.

Interest.

"So what say you, sisters?" I asked, my voice louder now, resonating across the realm. "Shall we hunt our prize? Shall we find the one mortal in all existence who dares to escape me?"

The void held its breath.

Velantheris was the first to respond, her violet flare spiraling gently. "If he truly holds answers... then yes. I will lend my light."

"I like the way he looks," another giggled. "I'm in."

And one by one, they answered.

Until twenty stars shimmered in unity around me, and I felt the pulse of something enormous stirring once again—something old, and endless.

Eris leaned toward me slightly, her voice only for me. "You got what you wanted, little sister."

I smiled. It was sharp. Cold. Hungry.

"I always do," I said.