Free Ghosts of Lyarra by Damian Shishkin Page B

life as none of it affected me in the slightest. Despite your careful planning, you then made your first mistake. You sent your elite to kill me; a move of stupid ignorance as you knew not what they would face, but you sent them none the less. Your bringers of a silent death, fell quickly for I am far beyond what they could have ever prepared for. My home had been violated and disturbed, so in retribution I decided to join your little game .”
    All the Councillors began to look around the room, searching for the one who this message was meant for. Even Iana squinted her eyes and looked around frantically, but whoever was the intended recipient of the message was not giving themselves away so easily. There was a feeling of mild panic in the room; no one had experienced this type of directed terror before.
    “ So now that you have made your move, I shall make mine. I will take from you your feeling of safety; steal from your very hands that which gives you comfort. From this moment on you will know how close I am to seeing your face and you shall look behind you every moment of every day. Every footstep you hear will strike terror in your heart, for you shall never know who or what I truly am .”
    At this point, even Iana was truly terrified at the threatening broadcast; unsure if this was part of the act or something truly real. Looking around the room, she saw that the most hardened resolved of the strongest willed women she knew had been crushed under the weight of this new threat. Some of the Councillors even had tears of fear in their eyes; the level of anxiety in the room had hit a fever pitch!
    “ Then I will take from you what you covet most,” the message continued, “I will deprive you of your precious prize that you have worked so hard for. There are no prayers that can stop me; no sage advice from your wise Prophets. All have left these shores for a safer time as the ships of chaos have landed upon you now and watch as anarchy reigns upon your world of lies !”
    The image shifted to an overhead view of the Temple of the Divine Light on Ryas; the home of the Guild. It was a building on an unparalleled scale in size and height; much like the Aztec pyramids in the Amazon in shape and design but near to the size of Olympus Mons on Mars. Its towering spires reached high into the upper atmosphere of the Guild planet as it was a symbol of peace and wisdom across the Empire. As the murmurs began to rise in the room, they were quickly silenced by an explosion that tore through the ancient structure. Emanating from the core of the temple, the blast sent flames shooting out from the windows on the level that reached outwards several hundred feet. The only thing that saved the structure from collapse was its construction of heavy rock and usage of titanium, yet one could only imagine the devastation left behind by the detonation.
    Cries of anguish rose in the Council as the very symbol of the Empire’s religious foundation burned in the afternoon light. From their podiums, they watched survivors run, limp and crawl from the temple’s exits; some of them burned horribly and clothes still smoking. The transmission of the unknown assailant ended, but was immediately replaced by planetary news feeds; it was the known terrorist attack in the long history of the Empire, and it was an exclamation point of the dysfunction in the Council of recent times.
    Within moments of the blast, an Ifierin security team rushed in to the chambers and secured the Empress before rushing her out to safety. The whereabouts of the terrorist threat was unknown, and the first priority was Iana’s safety. Other Ifierin began to secure the building for those that had attended the Council in person and those linked, had their holo-links terminated. As the mad rush to vacate the building began, the chaos the creature had promised was immediately visible.
    An unmarked shuttle tore away from the building’s depot; the Empress of Lyarra was being