Nucleus 1: The Dust of Moon [Mature Sci-fi Romance]

??:?? (Time is eternally static here), March 27, 2295

The Seventh Sense Drift, a Psionic Dream dimension

Jabari's legs pumped through knee-deep snow that he couldn't feel. No cold, no wetness—just the visual of white powder exploding with each stride. Behind him, shadows writhed like living smoke, reaching with tendrils that threatened to drag him into whatever nightmare they represented.

The landscape made no sense. A perpetual twilight stretched across jagged mountains of ice, their peaks lost in storm clouds that never moved. Pale green wisps drifted through the air like spectral fireflies, leaving trails of decay where they touched the snow. Everything here felt wrong, like looking at a painting where the perspective was slightly off.

Then he saw it—a splash of color that didn't belong. Cherry blossoms, golden petals bleeding into sickly green at the edges, drifting on a wind he couldn't feel. A forest materialized ahead, its trees withering even as he watched. Trunks crumbled to ash, branches dissolved like wet paper, until only one massive sakura remained.

"Celine! Amir!" Jabari sprinted toward the tree, hope surging through his chest.

They were there. Celine knelt in her signature green Sumina robes, the one with golden embroidering all over. Her hands glowed with golden Solar energy as she pressed them against a crystalline prison that lied on the ground like a coffin. Amir stood beside her in pale green robes, sweat beading on his forehead as he channeled his own power.

Inside the crystal—Fuuka. Her eyes were closed, body suspended in translucent blue that pulsed with its own heartbeat.

"It's not working," Celine snapped, her usual composure cracking. "The resonance is all wrong. This isn't some trauma-induced comatose—it's something else."

"We need a third Solar psion," Amir countered. "Enough healing power should be enough to push through."

"We don't have one! Jabari's dead, Thorin's trying to calm that grieving android, and we've tried every healing spell there is!"

Dead? The word hit Jabari like a plasma bolt to the chest. Yosemite. The canyon. Astrid's humans hands and oral arms wrapping around him as the Jokull Horde closed in.

"I'm right here," he said, but neither of them looked up. "Celine! Can you see me?"

They cannot hear you in this place, Jabari.

The voice drifted like incense smoke, formal yet warm. That measured cadence, the way she used his name—

You walk between heartbeats now. Between our shared thoughts. A pause, gentle as meditation. Where consciousness drifts when the body fails. Like water finding its level, awareness flows to spaces between.

"Fuuka?" His chest tightened. "You're in the shard? The one we used together?"

As a river remembers every stone it has touched, so too does the Crystal remember those who channel its power. Her voice carried a sad smile. When I pushed too much through the shard, it caught me. Not trapped, exactly. More like... a leaf pressed between pages of a book.

"Thorin has that shard now. Can he do something to free you?"

Elder Thorin carries me without knowing. The shard we used against Dilinur left marks on both of us. You lived. I...lingered.

"You can tell him! He must've it made it out." He urged.

I cannot. The Moondust shard's blocking my attempts to reach out! She replied in frustration.

"But I can hear you. How does this make sense?"

Must be our shared Aether. Yours flow in me now, and mine in you.

"I don't remember sharing something like that with—"

Jabari, you fool. She scolded. That night we shared. The Ritual. We went through all that so I could give my Aether to you.

"Oh, that…yeah…I remember now…" Scratching his head, he could feel himself blushing even in this ethereal realm. "In any event, we have the Yosemite shard."

Do we? Fuuka's voice lifted, a hint of joy in it. Then why are you here?

"I stayed behind to fend off Astrid, so they could escape with the shard." Lowering his hand, he looked around. Celine and Amir's apparitions were nowhere to be seen.

Astrid—the First Ísmarr of Jokull. She pondered before desperation seeped into her tone. Jabari, you big silly fool! That woman—that monster—won't stop until she has done experiment she could on you.

"Well, I made my choice. Wasn't smart, but I had to do it." He tilted his head. "Are you hurting? How do we get you out?"

Another pause from Fuuka. Her voice was lamenting now. Ironic. In seeking to save others, we lose ourselves. Yet even in losing, we may find unexpected paths.

"There has to be a way to bring you back—"

But the scene shattered like glass, reforming into a new tableau. Thorin stood on a windswept plateau, the familiar blue glow of a Moondust shard visible through the sealed container on his belt. Beside him, Ume had collapsed to her knees, synthetic tears streaming down her face.

"We should have stayed," Ume sobbed. "I should have made him retreat when—"

"Child." Thorin's weathered hand rested on her shoulder. "Jabari made his choice. A warrior's choice."

This time, when Jabari spoke, Thorin's head snapped up. Their eyes met across the impossible distance.

"Elder Thorin?"

"Jabari?" The old warrior's eyes widened. "How did you—no, it's the shard. Of course. Even here, its resonance remains." He glanced at Ume, who continued crying, oblivious to their exchange. "She cannot perceive this layer of reality. But you... you're caught between worlds, aren't you?"

"Fuuka's in there. The shard on you!" Jabari gestured to the Nordling monk's belt. "We can save her, she just spoke to me!"

"Has she now?" Thorin's green eyes narrowed. "If your psionic presence persists, your body must still be alive. Where are you?"

"I…" Jabari put a hand to his chin, realization dawning on him. "I don't know, actually."

Before either of them could continue, the sky tore open.

A massive jellyfish descended, its bell easily a hundred meters across. Deep blue flesh pulsed with bioluminescent patterns, and its oral arms writhed with a life of their own. When it spoke, Astrid's voice boomed across the dreamscape, but twisted with emotions he'd never heard from her before.

"So, not only do you have someone," the Ísmarr's words dripped venom and something else—pain? "You have several! And they all... care about you!"

"Astrid, what is this place? Where am I?"

"You are in no position to demand anything from me!"

One massive oral arm rose, crackling with Void energy that made reality bend around it. In that moment, Jabari saw it—a flash of genuine hurt behind the rage. She wasn't just angry. She was...

The arm crashed down.

The dream shattered.

Snow became fragments of broken glass. The twilight forest, the crying friends, the psionic realm—all of it fractured and fell away like a mirror dropped from great height.

And Jabari fell with it, tumbling back toward consciousness and whatever reality awaited him in the real world.

22:22, March 27, 2295

The Lair of Astrid, Mount Lyell, Yosemite Valley

Jabari's eyes snapped open to bioluminescent blue.

The ceiling above him pulsed with it. Veins of light threading through what looked like living ice, casting everything in an ethereal glow. His body still wouldn't move, though the paralysis had shifted from complete lockdown to something more like being wrapped in heavy blankets. Every sensation remained heightened, hyperaware of the fur pelts beneath him, the cool air against his skin, the—

He was naked.

"Oh good, you're awake!" Astrid's voice drifted from somewhere to his left. "I was starting to worry I'd miscalculated the dosage. Your body mass is really impressive, by the way. Very…heroic proportions."

Jabari managed to turn his head to find her sitting cross-legged on the cavern floor, surrounded by what looked like laboratory equipment jury-rigged from ice formations and salvaged tech.

She wore a simple white shift that clung to her damp skin like morning mist, the fabric so fine it seemed to shimmer with its own inner light. Her midnight hair was pulled back in an intricate plait that began at the crown of her head and cascaded down her back like a dark waterfall—the braid itself seemed almost alive, glistening with moisture that never quite dried. Water droplets clung to her pale skin like tiny diamonds, that perpetual dewiness—in the cavern's bioluminescent glow, she looked like something out of a fairy tale—heartbreakingly beautiful and utterly alien. It made Jabari forget she wasn't quite human anymore.

"Where..." His voice came out hoarse. "Where are my clothes?"

"In the corner, neatly folded." She didn't look up from whatever she was examining under a crystalline microscope. "I'm very organized. Oh, and I washed them—they were filthy from all that fighting. You're welcome!"

The casual domesticity of it made his head spin. "You stripped me?"

"Well, yes? How else was I supposed to check for injuries?" Now she did look up, those glacier-blue eyes genuinely puzzled. "You had some nasty bruising on your ribs. I applied a healing salve—my own formula! Mostly Helionite-based with some protein chains I isolated from…oh, you probably don't care about the biochemistry..."

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"You nearly wiped out my warband." He said incredulously. "And then…you healed me? How does that make sense?"

"Because I can, that's why!" Her response was instant. "Ísmarr like me are very useful. The Jokull would've gotten far without me. And Lady Maven, obviously!"

"Astrid." He tried to push himself up, managed to prop himself on one elbow. The furs were incredibly soft. "What do you want from me?"

"Samples, obviously." She turned back to her microscope. "Blood, saliva, semen—the usual. I need to understand how the Lotus variant integrates with human physiology. Your variant is particularly interesting because the integration is so clean. Consensual transmission always produces better results."

The clinical way she discussed it made him flinch. "You're talking about my body like I'm a guinea pig."

"Aren't we all?" She pulled back from the microscope, and for a moment, something flickered across her face—an emotion too quick to catch. "Harald used to say that. 'Every interaction is an experiment, Astrid! Every person is a data point!'" Her voice took on a bitter edge. "I was his favorite experiment, you know. Until I wasn't."

The dream-memory of her frustration flickered through Jabari's mind. "What's it between you and—that Harald?"

"I thought I loved him." She stood, moving to another makeshift workstation. Her movements were oddly graceful, as if she was constantly floating even on land. "Or maybe I just loved the idea of being chosen. Special. Do you know what it's like, being from Europa? We're the edge of nowhere. But I was smart, so smart, and when Harald picked me for his advanced studies..." She laughed, but it was hollow. "I thought it meant something."

"What happened?"

"I got older. Twenty-four, almost twenty-five. Still beautiful—I know I'm beautiful, that's just data—but not young anymore. Not the brilliant student with stars in her eyes." She was organizing vials now, her hands steady but her voice starting to crack. "So he gave me a gift. 'Immortality, Astrid. You'll never age, never die. Isn't that what everyone wants?'"

The parallels hit Jabari like a physical blow. "He made you into this so he wouldn't have to commit to you."

"Transformed me." Her correction was sharp. "Made me the First Ísmarr. His prototype for a new kind of being. And you know what? It worked perfectly. I can't age, can't die, can't even have children. The perfect woman, frozen in time." She gestured at herself with one hand. "Forever twenty-four, forever beautiful, forever useful. Just never quite human enough to marry."

Jabari pushed himself fully upright, the paralysis fading enough for real movement. "That's…messed up."

"Fucked up. You don't need to try and sound nice with it." She turned to face him fully, and he saw the walls beginning to crack. "At least I got immortality out of it. What did you get? That pretty Sand Lotus girl—Fuuka, wasn't it? She used you for the ritual, unlocked your power, then what? She went back to whoever she really loves."

The accuracy of it stung. "She was helping me—"

"By fucking you." The vulgarity sounded strange in her cultured voice. "Oh, I'm sure she made it very spiritual, very meaningful. The Moaning Lotus Ritual is like that. But at the end of the day, she needed someone with Solar potential, you were available, and now you're infected with a virus that marks you forever. Did she mention that part? That you'd carry traces of her in your cells for the rest of your life?"

Before Jabari could respond, a deep rumble echoed through the cavern. They both turned toward the entrance, and even at this distance, Jabari's enhanced vision picked out three distinct silhouettes against the bioluminescent glow.

The first made his blood run cold.

Skarn. Even from here, the Primarch of Fenris dominated the space, his monstrous form seeming to absorb light rather than reflect it. Five meters of corrupted flesh and bone, topped by a skull that belonged in nightmares. Orange eyes burned like dying stars in that skeletal face, and when they swept across the cavern, they lingered on Astrid just a heartbeat too long.

Behind him came a creature that moved with unsettling grace—humanoid but wrong, like someone had tried to reconstruct a person from memory and gotten the proportions subtly off. This one's flesh was mottled and scarred, patches of exposed bone visible through tattered skin. The way he moved, all calculated deference and oily charm, marked him as dangerous in a different way than Skarn's raw power. A Draug, Jabari realized, though something about those burning red eyes suggested intelligence beyond mere transformation.

The third figure moved with quiet certainty. Ulrik—the Jokull elite from the battle earlier. Four meters of armored polar bear, standing upright on powerful legs. Unlike his companions, he showed no eagerness, no anticipation. Just patient, inevitable strength.

"Shit." Astrid's whisper barely reached him as she jerked upright. "Whatever they do or say, do NOT antagonize Skarn, understand?"

"What?" Jabari frowned, still processing the sheer wrongness of Skarn's presence. "Why would they even—"

"Just say yes, Jab." Her finger pressed against his lips, ice-cold and trembling slightly. "Please. I'll handle this."

The casual nickname, the desperation in her voice—both hit him harder than they should have. "Yeah. Okay."

"Astrid." Skarn's voice rolled through the cavern like an avalanche, each syllable a threat. "The Moondust Crystal lies within our grasp, and here I find you playing with..." Those burning eyes fixed on Jabari, and the disdain in them was palpable. "...lesser stock."

"I'm preparing him for extraction and study of the Lotus variant, esteemed Primarch." Astrid's bow was precisely forty-five degrees—not too shallow to show disrespect, not too deep to seem mocking.

"The Lotus variant. How... quaint." Skarn moved closer, and the temperature seemed to drop with each step. "Yet for all your supposed competence, you failed to secure the Yosemite shard."

"Primarch, this is the Maridian who stayed behind when the Directorate forces fled with the shard." Ulrik's voice rumbled from behind Skarn, matter-of-fact and oddly respectful.

"Brave, certainly. But ultimately futile—" The skeletal Draug's voice dripped false sympathy.

"Silence, Watrous!" Skarn's head snapped toward his followers before returning to Astrid. One massive claw extended, pointing at her like an accusation. "You chose to capture this specimen instead of pursuing the shard, despite Ulrik's counsel. Is this accurate?"

"Yes." The word came out steady, though Astrid hadn't moved from her bow.

"Then you have failed me, Astrid." Something shifted in Skarn's stance, a predator deciding whether to strike. "Give me one reason not to tear you to pieces across this ice."

"Primarch..." Desperation crept into Astrid's voice. "I am the First Ísmarr of the Jokull. My research, my intelligence—they serve our great hordes well."

"As effectively as they've served to let the Yosemite shard slip through our fingers?"

Five tentacles emerged from Skarn's waist with wet, organic sounds that made Jabari's stomach turn. They writhed independently, each one thick as a man's arm and glistening with some viscous secretion. One extended toward Astrid's face with deliberate slowness.

"Perhaps you'd be more useful not for your brain, but for your womb..."

Jabari's hands clenched into fists. The casual cruelty of it, the way Astrid held still as that appendage traced her cheek—

"My research into the Lotus variant could benefit both Hordes," Astrid said carefully, not flinching as the tentacle left a glistening trail across her skin. "Surely that knowledge has value?"

"Value?" Skarn's laugh was like grinding bone. "Your value has always been quite... specific."

The tentacle's tip secreted something white and viscous that dripped down Astrid's cheek. She didn't move, didn't even breathe, but Jabari saw her hands trembling where they pressed against her thighs.

"ENOUGH!" The word tore from Jabari's throat before he could stop it. He tried to surge upright, but whatever biological restraints Astrid had woven held him fast to the furs.

Skarn's attention shifted like a searchlight finding its target. The tentacle withdrew as he turned, looming over Jabari's prone form. "Ah. The pathetic creature who traded a shard for a mechanical doll."

"Yeah, that's me!" Jabari met those burning eyes without flinching. "And you're the asshole who gets off on terrorizing your own people!"

"Bold..." Skarn studied him with newfound interest. "Suicidal, but bold."

Astrid moved then, swift and desperate, placing herself between them. "My Primarch, I beseech you—allow me to continue my work with this subject. The Lotus strain represents a unique opportunity. Knowledge we cannot afford to miss."

"Ulrik?" Skarn didn't look away from Jabari. "Your assessment?"

The polar bear warrior shifted his massive weight. "The Lotus strain remains elusive. These Sand Lotus fanatics from Venus have achieved something remarkable—psionic transfer without transformation. Understanding it could prove... advantageous."

Silence stretched like a held breath. Finally, Skarn made a sound that might have been contemplation or hunger.

"You exist at my sufferance, Astrid. Your usefulness to our alliance ends the moment I decide otherwise." His gaze shifted to her, and something in it made Jabari's skin crawl. "Fail me again, and I'll let Maren reduce you to component parts. Slowly."

"I... thank you for your mercy, Primarch Skarn." Her bow was deeper this time, submission written in every line.

"Extract what you need from this Maridian. Drain him dry if necessary." Skarn turned toward a tunnel that yawned deeper into the mountain. "Rally with us before dawn. We return to Mars when the moment is right."

"It will be done."

Astrid held her position until all three had vanished into the darkness, Ulrik's measured steps and Watrous's scuttling gait following their master's deliberate stride. Only when the last echo faded did she allow herself to move, and when she did, it was to collapse to her knees, whole body shaking.

"Anansi's ass..." Jabari watched her shoulders heave with barely controlled breaths. "Does he always—"

"Don't ask!" Her voice was raw. "Just...don't."

But he couldn't help himself. "That's sexual harassment. Ekwensu, that's assault. You don't have to take that from him."

Her laugh was bitter and broken. "Don't I? I'm Jokull. He's Fenris. Our Hordes are allied because Lady Maren wills it. Because she needs Skarn's strength for whatever she's planning." She wiped at her cheek, scrubbing away the viscous white trail. "This is the price of it. Our force joined with Fenris, the strongest horde in the Five Realms."

"That's fucked up."

"Welcome to life as a Radi-Mon." She pushed herself to her feet, movements sharp and angry. "You think being human was any better? At least now when men look at me like I'm meat, I can kill and eat them. When I was human, all I could do was smile and hope they'd choose me for…more than just my body."

The parallel to his own situation—being used, being valued only for what he could provide—wasn't lost on either of them.

"You asked why I healed you back?" she continued, moving back to her makeshift laboratory. "Want to know? Because for once, I want someone to look at me and see if they see a person worth protecting. Not an experiment. Not a trophy. Not something to put their dick into. Just...someone who matters."

"I mean…you do matter."

"Yeah? To who?" She was pulling out instruments now—crystalline syringes, vials that glowed faintly in the bioluminescent light. "To Harald, I was data. To Lady Maren, I'm a tool, just treated better. To Skarn, I'm a hole he hasn't fucked yet. And to you..." She turned, and her glacier eyes were bright with unshed tears. "To you, I'm the monster who captured you."

"You're not a monster."

"Aren't I?" She moved closer, instruments in hand. "I'm about to drain you of blood, saliva, and semen. I'm going to catalog your genetic markers, document how the Lotus variant integrates with your cells, reduce you to numbers and data points. How is that different from what Harald did to me?"

The rawness of it hung between them like a blade.

"Because you know it's wrong," Jabari said quietly. "Monsters don't know what's wrong."

She stood there for a long moment, tools trembling in her hands. Then, with deliberate care, she set them aside and approached him. The fur bed's bindings loosened at her gesture, allowing him to sit up fully.

"No…you need to lie back," she said softly.

"Astrid?"

"Please." The word cracked something in her composure. "I have to do this. If I don't bring Skarn results, he'll give me to Lady Maren, and she'll...she has ways to punish me. Worse than death. Worse than anything Skarn could do."

Jabari looked at her delicate face. Past the supernatural beauty, past the perfect features that never aged. He saw the exhaustion there.

"Okay. Do what you need to." He lay back. Somehow, it felt like the rest of the world could wait. Ume, the Moondust Crystal, the Directorate, Fuuka, what Grandma Kisi had told him—everything could wait, he felt.

She knelt beside him, and for a moment, neither moved. Water droplets from her damp hair landed on his chest like tears.

"Will you kill me after?" The question came out steadier than he felt. "When you have what you need?"

She leaned over him, positioning herself with clinical precision that couldn't quite hide the tremor in her limbs. One leg swung over his waist as she straddled him, her weight barely there, as if she might float away at any moment.

"No promises," she whispered, and her voice held exhaustion. "Frankly, I don't give a shit anymore…"

But instead of reaching for her instruments, instead of beginning whatever procedure she'd planned, she bent down. Her hands braced against his bare chest, trembling like butterfly wings. Her face came closer, those glacial blue eyes filling his vision.

Their lips met. Her eyes fluttered shut.

Time stopped.

The kiss was nothing like he'd expected. Not clinical, not desperate, not rough. It was achingly gentle. Her lips were cool and tender, tasting faintly of snow and salt tears.

Jabari's surprise melted into something else entirely. His hands found her waist through the spider-silk fabric, steadying her, anchoring her to this moment. She made a small sound—maybe surprise, maybe relief—and the kiss deepened.

His eyes closed, and in that darkness, there was only the feeling of her lips against his, the weight of her body, the sense that two broken people had found a moment of understanding in the last place either expected.

The cavern's bioluminescent glow painted shadows on the walls, but neither of them saw. There was only the kiss: one that tasted like sorrow and hope in equal measure.