Turn About

FORMALITIES

COPYRIGHTS:The Lord Marshal, the Necromongers, Aereon the Elemental, Furya, the name Richard Riddick and other elements taken from the context of the movies Pitch Black, The Chronicles of Riddick, their novelizations and their official websites are copyrighted to Universal Studios. The manner of their use, and everything else in Saved By Grace, is the creative creation of FanFic Member Amita4ever.

RATED: T(if at any time you feel this rating is inappropriate, please SEND MESSAGE through my profile)
FOR
Language: mild
Sex/Nudity: none
Violence: strong
Other:war imagery

SUMMARY: 30 years before TCoR a man sought his future and certain events were set in motion... during the destruction of Furya an infant was left in a trashcan to die, his own umbilical 'artfully' wrapped around his neck. How'd he survive? My take.

ON RIDDICK'S TIMELINE: This story takes place about30 years before The Chronicles of Riddick movie. This is the first tale in a story arc I have created for Riddick that tries to fill in some of the space left by the movies while staying within the canon (universe and timeline) laid out by Universal Studios. Most stories in this arc are stand-alone with only minor references to other stories.
(On the subject of timelines, other Riddick writers looking to write within (or in the vicinity of) the official canon are invited to check out The History of Riddick: A Writer's Tool, a rough timeline collected from official sources and posted here on FanFic.)

WRITER'S NOTE: The novelization of TCoR indicates the 'seer' who started all this may not have been entirely willing. This is the premise used for this story.

REVIEWS ALWAYS APPRECIATED

(Good reviews are loved, critical reviews are appreciated & details are treasured)

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PROLOGUE

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A disquieting revision had been required; rumors and movements and sudden variants had shifted values drastically. The calculations indicated a change in the leadership of the Necromongers, and it was a change confirmed when, against all odds, he had come; when in opposition to all equations a single Necromonger ship had crushed Elemental soil; and when contrary to all computations he had sent a summons. While the rest of the Elemental Council disassembled, and recalculated, and modified equations, Aereon acted. She was curious. No Elemental had ever met a Necromonger Lord Marshal before, not and survived to speak of it. Certainly none had ever been invited to be one's guest.

Guest.

Such an ambiguous word. To one it might mean accepting a host's hospitality while having the autonomy to come and go as one pleased. To another it meant merely the courtesy of letting one keep one's mind intact. Aereon had calculated the risks. She had felt the odds were in her favor. She was, after all, an Air Elemental. It was difficult to hold one such as her against her will.

But none had ever met a Necromonger Lord Marshal before. The title Holy Half Dead had meaning, and he had abilities no Elemental equation could have reckoned.

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«MyCoR 1»

» SAVED BY GRACE «

« ††† »

By Amita4ever

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Chapter 1

Against All Odds

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"You will tell me what I want to know!" the young warrior said with forced patience.

"I can not," Aereon said with equal patience, hers less forced as she stood without moving, without flickering. The air around her was quiet. "What you ask, we do not do." Her patience found its source in wisdom, in knowledge, in the simple dullness of exhaustion. The chains encircling her wrists were silent in her stillness. They anchored her in solidity, forbidding her the freedom to flow upon the currents, to slip between the molecules of air in natural effortless movement. The mere sound of them was as maddening as his questions, for like them, they sought to force of her that which was unnatural.

"Can not or will not?" the young warrior closed in. "I grow tired of your stubbornness. You think me ignorant, but I know of your kind, Elemental. You know things. You will tell me or..." his hand reached out, a human hand shadowed of a double image, grey, liquid, leading slightly. The human hand stopped at her breast as the double image continued to flow forward. She gasped as a shaft of ice that had no substance pierced her chest; a shaft so chill it froze her breath, her heart, her blood. It invaded her presence and withdrew pulling her with it. Not her - flesh, not her - blood, but HER... her being, her very essence! She screamed soundlessly as bonds never meant to be divided while living were stretched – as every fragment of her existence felt torn by an exquisite, overwhelming agony that engulfed her heart, mind... her entirety. Her vision blurred as a pale wraith of herself began to visibly separate from her body... and then he let go. Her essence snapped back and the chains chimed brightly as she fell back against the wall, stunned and shocked.

The young man stepped up casually and leaned in close, as if confiding a secret. "I can kill you," he said softly with careless confidence.

"Then... then you will never learn... what I can tell you," Aereon responded breathlessly, trying to gather wits that had scattered like a wind. Her definition of reality was fracturing. Madness, true madness, hovered at the edge of her mind summoned by a terrible pain that was as incomprehensible as it was inconceivable. Though the pain was gone, the memory of it filled every fiber and thought of her being as she tried to grasp the concept of a physical being that could touch the very essence of a being, that could drag that essence from its physical form. There was no equation to explain, no computation that would circumscribe this juxtaposition of the physical and the ethereal that did not seem to border upon deity, but this man was no god!

"My fair Aereon," the Lord Marshal lifted her chin with a human hand and she flinched at his touch. "If you can not tell me my future, I have no further use for you."

"Elementals... do not... tell the future," she repeated yet again pressing herself against the wall, the familiar argument giving a familiar anchor to her thoughts, "we calculate..."

"Foretell, calculate, predict, I don't care what you call it," the hand beneath her chin fell away only to come back across her cheek with force. "Just tell me what I want to know, or I will kill you and summon one who will." This pain was physical. This pain was real. It held her mind upon the plane of sanity.

"No other will come," Aereon returned, fear giving her words the mask of defiance. "I alone was willing."

"Then I'll kill the lot of you," he snarled quietly as he turned away and strode for the door, "the whole damn planet of you," he added, and it was no idle threat.

"NO!" Aereon cried, and knew she had lost with the utterance.

The Lord Marshal paused, profiled against the light streaming in through the open doorway. A door that stood open in pure mockery of her captivity. Were she not chained she could have been out that door before he could draw breath. "Or perhaps not," he said lowly, letting his voice echo to her off the smooth airtight walls of her cell. Slowly he turned back to her, his victory already gleaming in his eyes. "Calculate for me, Aereon," he smiled coldly. "Calculate for me and perhaps the Elemental home world will be the last to fall."

The last to fall! Time to seek an answer. "And I will be allowed to return home?" she asked desperately.

"I will see to it myself," he promised smoothly. "After all, you are my guest." The meanings of those words, hidden, twisted or implied, were too many for her tortured brain to manipulate, but for the sake of her sanity she had to accept them as spoken, whatever the odds.

"What would you know?" she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"You know what I ask," he answered, his impatience transformed by anticipation, "What is my future? Will I be the one to take the Legion Vast across the Threshold?" She understood him better now than when he first asked in the guise of courteous hosting. It was less a question than a statement. He sought only confirmation; confirmation upon which to justify his merciless destruction of all life, and the complex equations she had shaped based on her observations favored YES, but she refused to give him that.

Her mind unsettled, the paths of logic fractured, it was a short fall from calculation to conjecture. Make him uncertian. Slow him down... "The possibility exists,..." she hedged, "but the equation is unclear. It is more likely,... if your host continues its path of devastation unchecked,... that you will set into motion the wheels of your own destruction." Vague enough.

This was not what he had wanted to hear. "How," the young warrior breathed tightly, "How would this happen?"

How? Yes, how? It was so hard to think. Her mind strained to fashion a reasoned equation though it felt whole numbers were missing. Make it simple but believable: simple yet unsolvable... An individual, one person, the proverbial planetoid in an Oort cloud... "A child will be born...a male... who will spell your downfall." Yes, born was good. Every being was born once, no help there, and male... Would you decimate the one sex used to form your army out of fear? No, so the odds would favor male with the Necromonger custom of converting new warriors from every fallen world, and it would be believed because the Necromonger's own practices provided the most likely avenue, killing and keeping. Simple. Believable. Unsolvable.

Yes, believable. All too believable. She saw the anticipation in his eyes replaced by fear. Yes! Become fearful, become cautious, slow your advance. Is it this planet, or the next? Even as she paralleled the likely path of his thoughts she saw the flaw in her own. She could not answer for it. The affects of his torment had shattered the linear patterns of reason. Without time to reorder her mind, her calculations were flawed.

"Where?" he grabbed the front of her gown with both hands and shook her in artless panic, "What race will he be?" The question triggered a thread, an equation in its infancy that had been introduced to the Council before this Lord Marshal's ascension and revitalized by the recent calculations. No, she couldn't tell him that. They might be the only hope of keeping Balance intact.

"The equations are incomplete, there are many..." Suddenly twin shafts of ice pierced her chest as his liquid hands mimicked flesh. She fought. She clung to what was hers as her essence was seized and shaken... as the bonds to flesh were stretched and ripped and rended.

"What race!" he roared in a voice that had the impact of blows.

She tried to cling to what was her as her mind turned inside out, as every nerve was traced by fire twice over, as her very existence was up ended. She could not hold against him, but before the bonds could be completely sundered she distantly heard a woman's voice screaming... and the rending stopped.

Her esssece snapped back a second time sending her to the floor in a harsh jangle of chain. She lay there only barely conscious, barely aware, as wisps of self tried to knit themselves back into a mental whole. The Lord Marshal turned without another word and strode from the room. The airtight door swung shut with an ominous boom, and for once she was glad for the cold dark emptiness. She needed to be alone to sort the pieces of her self, an equation jumbled beyond calculation. She wanted nothing more than to let herself fade to nil, but somehow a single thought held her together. She had to survive and return to the Council. They had to know what she had observed. They had to know what she had done. The last to fall! Time to calculate an answer.

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Aereon glided down the ramp of the Lord Marshal's shuttle and beheld the magnificent capital city of the Elementals. The young warrior had kept his word. For three full days she had remained in her isolated cell, although she had little complaint for it. She had needed that time to "pull herself back together" in a manner too literal for comfortable contemplation. Her memories of the horrific experience were splintered, but she remembered what the Council needed to know, that she had bought them time. That knowledge had given her the strength to continue the slow ordering and organization of the equation that was Aereon until she felt, more than anything else, like something whole. But there was at least one mercurial piece missing. It weighted upon her heart like lead even as it eluded her every effort to recall it, slipping through her mental grasp like water... something she wasn't sure she wanted to remember.

When he had appeared in her doorway on the morning of the fourth day she had wanted to scream, she had wanted to hide, she had wanted to run cowering in the corner like a gibbering idiot, but she had done none of those things. She would be damned if she were going to let him know how close he had come to breaking her.

She would have been very surprised to learn that her choice had marked her. In that moment she had earned deference, if not respect from the young Lord Marshal for she was not the first to endure that manner of interrogation. She was, however, among the few – a very few – to survive with their sanity intact. Most who were questioned by the Lord Marshal himself joined the ranks of the Lensors shortly there after, their minds suited for little else.

This Aereon, this Air Elemental, however, was an exception even among the sane survivors. Three days after he had nearly ripped her soul from her body - and there was no question he could have done so for none could resist him - she stood before him poised and calm as if none of it had happened. No, that wasn't true; there was something in her eyes that had not been there before - a cold desperation, a defiant strength. He frowned slightly. Was she unique among Elementals, or were they all so strong minded? Perhaps he should forget his promise to spare the Elemental planet until last. To have such strength and abilities in the Legion Vast would all but guarantee his successful crusade to the Threshold. On the other hand, he could well afford to be magnanimous for Aereon had given him that surety already. Only one planet... one child stood in his way.

"My fair Aereon," he offered his prisoner a faint bow, "It is time you returned home. As your visit seems to have left you fatigued, I have taken it upon myself to escort you. You are, after all, my guest." His cool smile was mocking.

Drawing herself up, Aereon lifted her chin and forced herself to accept his invitation with stately dignity, her chains trailing behind her like a train of bells. It mattered not if it were to death or departure; she could do little either way.

They passed down corridors and through the main hall before taking a lift, and she realized they were indeed going to the flight deck where the Lord Marshal's shuttle waited. She also noted that throughout the Basilica was an air of anticipation that had not been there when she arrived. The change was distinct. The arrival of an Elemental had caught interest, even without the added indignity of chains, but her leave taking went all but unnoticed. Every Necromonger Aereon saw was focused and intent, nor was uncertainty among any of the moods she sensed.

After her chains were removed they departed without delay. The journey was brief. Were Aereon not so mentally strained, her own elemental powers would have carried her the distance nearly as quickly, but as it was, the Lord Marshal's "courtesy," while dreaded, was needful. The Lord Marshal, however, offered only inconsequential conversation that required little investment of thought or attention. There were no comments regarding the "prophecy," nor requests for any further calculations. He was content to watch her, and Aereon could only describe his expression as distracted, if not satisfied. Why? It unsettled her already troubled mind.

When the shuttle set down Aereon was glad to depart as quickly as she had entered. She glided down the ramp onto the grass wanting very much to hasten to the city, but pride held her movement in check. The Lord Marshal paced at her side, but it seemed he saw little of the beauty before him, his gaze focused contemplatively on the woman beside him. "At the appointed time, fair Aereon," he smiled, "we shall meet again."

His sureness galled her. "Your appointed time will come sooner than you desire," she answered loftily, her courage bolstered by the nearness of her home, "if you do not heed my warning and check your advance."

"Oh, heed I have, my Lady of the Breezes." Her airs seemed to amuse him, though there was covetousness in his eyes as he gazed at her. "Heeded well."

Despite the warmth of the sun, Aereon felt a chill that was not lost when the Lord Marshal turned his attention to the communications officer that appeared at the head of the ramp. The Necromonger leader glared, annoyed at the interruption, but the fervor in officer's face persuaded him to let the man speak.

"The entire armada has reported in," the officer saluted eagerly. "All ships acknowledging course laid in for Furya. We depart on your command," and with that pronouncement Aereon found herself dismissed out of hand. That which had been distracting the Lord Marshal grew to consume him as his eyes took on a manic wildness.

"At last!" he exclaimed. "So some Furyan brat thinks to stand in the way of my glory. We shall see," and he was gone up the ramp without a single glance back at the stunned Air Elemental.

Furya! Where had he heard the name Furya? The ramp lifted sealing the shuttle as the Air Elemental struggled with her fractured memories. The ship lifted off, the incredible turbulence of its backwash flickering her form to near invisibility as a dark and terrible recollection shaped itself to the gaps of her memory. The roar of the shuttle engulfed her, occluding all other sounds and sensations save those from her past. The remembered pain of the Lord Marshal's hellish touch overwhelmed her mind as she again heard a woman's distant screaming. "Furyan," she heard the woman scream "F-u-r-y-a-n!" And that voice was her own.

What would have killed any other mortal left Aereon untouched, but as the violent winds of the shuttle's departure calmed, the Air Elemental was revealed on her knees in mortal agony. The enormity of what she had done crushed her. She had doomed an entire planet. She had destroyed all hope of Balance. She had, in a single moment of torment, fated the entire universe to death... or worse. There was no mortal way to atone for what she had done. "Oh, God," she whispered, "Forgive me."

The Elementals worshiped no god; Balance was their idol. Their numbers consumed them, and symmetry ruled them. They would plot their own course, they would determine their own fate, perhaps nudge the fate of others in the name of Balance and Equilibrium, but they were not so foolish as to deny the existence of God. Ignore Him they might choose, but refute Him they could not. The numbers did not lie. So they built their beliefs around the presumption of an absent power that had left the managing to the creation, and the Elementals saw it their place to oversee. But there was no other who could know the magnitude of what she had done, perhaps even better than she herself. It was His creation she had damned. The people... the countless people she had condemned she could not address, but the One who made them she could. "Forgive me."

The mass of her sin left her breathless, and she only hoped she would die, but as she lay there in the grass she felt the dreadful weight upon her eased – not removed, but eased, as if another had stepped in to share the burden.

"I Am He beyond calculation." She felt a booming voice in her mind, and yet its softness was such a birdsong might drown it out if she choose not to listen, a still small voice with the vastness of space that echoed in her hopeless emptiness. A voice, she realized, that she had heard before, but more often than not ignored. "You seek My Will separate from Me in the coldness of numbers, but you forget I Am a Living God. My Will is beyond your reckoning." There was a biding anger in the tone tempered by an infinite sorrow, "Though you gave your prophecy falsely, yet will My Will be accomplished in My time. His path will be the darker for what you have done, but a child of Furya will be the instrument of My justice."

Aereon was left gasping with the immensity of the power she felt in the final words, and in them she felt both despair as dark as starless space, and hope as bright as a sun. There was no reprieve for Furya. The fate of a planet still rested at her feet, the devastating consequence of her mortal foolishness, but...

"There is hope," she whispered in awe and trembling, "the prophecy is not false," and though she would tell the Council all, she knew they would more carefully calculate the odds of her insanity than the her prophecy's veracity. The reason for its truth was one no other Elemental would accept for there was no equation to embrace it; God will make a way.

"I will see this," Aereon promised herself. "If I have to travel to every planet in the galaxy, I will see this. I will warn those I can, and I will find this child. I will see this prophecy fulfilled.

But first, Furya would fall.