Free Naero's War: The Citation Series 3: Naero's Trial by Mason Elliott Page A

itself had gone dormant once removed from its host.
    She used biomancy to study it and even that nearly made her sick. The G’lothc and everything they made and touched felt somehow violated and corrupted. It literally hurt to interact with them. That was the way the Darkforce was.
    The possession wyrms were insidious creatures–constructs, living machines no less abominable than the Darkforce generators. They took over a host and robbed them of their free will, and then their body and their life. The host body became a vessel, and the possession wyrm opened a gateway to the Void, the dark spirit realm poised upon the brink of the Darkforce dimensions of annihilation. That was where the fell spirits of the long-dead G’lothc lurked and waited, biding their time. Yearning and howling for release from the very hellish prison they had fashioned for themselves by the evil of their own actions while they had lived, seeking to destroy all life in the universe.
    That still remained their fanatical goal.
    Yet how to defeat such beings when they were already technically dead? That was a bit of a sticking point. They could still act and mar the universe through their will, and through the hands of their formidable servants, minions, and slaves.
    From what Riel had said, most of the Gamma Quadrant was under just such an assault by the enemy’s forces. And if such could be imagined, things were even worse off there than down in the Alpha Quadrant. Because the enemy had gained several footholds there in far-flung areas, and their power was expanding and on the rise.
    Just as Naero and her allies had feared when they had visited the Gamma Quadrant briefly in the past. If the foe took over the Gamma Quadrant, they would have even more power and reason to attack and subjugate the rest of the galaxy.
    Naero studied that sickening little hi-tek enemy wyrm with her biomancy. If their infestation spread, all of humanity and every sentient race could be taken over and consumed.
    And thus far, any sentients infected by the possession wyrm did not last much longer than a month or two before they were utterly consumed by its malignant Darkforce energies. They were all reduced to ash.
    Naero brushed the frost off the clear panel of the stasis tube.
    Of course, a small lander girl of six or seven with long dark hair and pale skin.
    A little girl who looked much like Naero herself had when she was a child.
    A girl who could look like her and Khai’s daughter.
    If the little lander girl was revived, by all of the reports, she would die in agony within the hour, even after the wyrm was removed.
    “No,” Naero said, clenching her free fist and looking down at that helpless child. “If there is a way to save you and the people of Kalathar from a dark fate such as this, I shall find it.” She looked at the vile wyrm writhing in its shield case as if she might close her hand upon it with all her great strength and crush it to death.
    There had to be a cure for such malevolent insanity and hate.
    That was it. They were like a virus. Like a disease.
    She had to try again, even if the awareness guarding the KDM batted her aside once more. She had to try to find a solution–a cure.
    Naero darkened the room once more, and held the small stasis tube across her lap. Then she held the wyrm and its capsule clutched in both hands, opened her third eye, and concentrated.
    In a matter of instants, she stood before the KDM’s barrier of adamant once more.
    In one hand she clutched the child’s glowing soul essence to her breast; in the other, extended hand, she thrust out the foul essence of the enemy possession wyrm as far as she could away from herself. It hurt and nauseated her simply to be near it.
    She called to whatever AI or awareness defended the barrier.
    Naero called out in Kexxian, “You know me by now. I am part of you, and you are part of me. You know who and what I am. For all of my failings, I am not your enemy. You know this. See what I have