The Eldest
Posted on Fri Mar 29th, 2024 @ 5:05pm by Commander War’roQ Last Son of the House Duras & Fleet Captain Maxwell Culver
3,081 words; about a 15 minute read
Mission:
Home Sweet Home
Location: Kaitos: Council of the Elders
Timeline: MD4: 0800 hours (local time)
Max had decided to present himself as expected, a proper Fleet Captain in Starfleet. Looking up at the Capital Building, he had forgotten how intimidating it had seemed when he had been a child. Three oval shapes that very much resembled a famous Opera House on Earth. He remembered an assignment that required him to go to Sydney, but he decided before reaching that assignment on the syllabus to drop the class. It had no bearing on his major.
Max took the stairs two at a time until reaching a massive, single marble slab on which the building perched. Its white backs gleamed a pale yellow in the morning sun making the inside appear much darker than it probably was.
Walking inside, Max found the place bustling with people heading to their offices, cubicles and wherever else they worked. Stepping up to the receptionist, Max announced himself, “Captain Maxwell Culver to see the Council of Elders, please.”
The woman looked at him, his uniform and rank, as if confirming his information before looking up the meeting. “I’m sorry, hon, the Council is in session already and I don’t see your appointment scheduled anywhere. Please, take a seat and I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Her attention drifted away and Max turned to look for a place to sit. This wasn’t a meeting he had planned, but it came directly from the Council itself. “Why would they arrange a meeting and then be in a council meeting?’ he wondered, still looking for a seat, except that everything looked like modern art.
Eventually, Max found a bird-like object and sat upon its back. He could rest his head back on its craned shoulders and neck. He was almost asleep when someone shooed him off the artwork. Checking the chronometer on his wrist an entire hour had passed. Now a bit annoyed, he approached the desk again. “I was under the impression that you were going to check on that meeting for me?” he said tersely, holding back his annoyance at perching himself on the art while waiting an hour.
“I’m sorry, I’m not authorized to interrupt a meeting of the council, Captain,” the woman at the desk responded. “Are you sure that’s the name the appointment was made under?”
Max had never even thought about being on Kaitos and using his natural name. “Um…this is going to be stupid of me, but Maxa of the House Culver.” He sounded and felt a lot sheepish in retrospect.
“Mmmm. I gotcha and I’m going to be in trouble over this one. You’re not scheduled to meet with the Council, but Eldest Salanna Muatan, and I’ve made you an hour late!” She came around the desk and drug him by hand through the three large buildings until they reached another reception area.
“Maxa, last son of the House Culver to see the Eldest Salanna Muatan!” She managed to announce his entire title in one puff of breath before gasping for another. After which, she dashed back to her desk.
This time a severe man, with severe eyebrows and deeply ancient eyes took a moment to scan Max with those cold, old eyes. “I have served the Eldest for nearly two thousand years. She is never kept waiting. You are an hour late. This will be very interesting, I think. Yes. Very. Interesting.”
Max was led into a massive, dark room by the old man who had not bothered to introduce himself. “Wait here. She will be right with you,” the gangly, old man said.
“What? In the dark?” Max asked, but the man had already slipped silently away, leaving him alone in the dark.
Backing up against the wall, Max settled on the floor and leaned his head back. He felt his eyes growing heavy. He checked the chronometer and just as he felt, an hour had nearly passed. He shrugged and tipped his head forward.
He was gently snoring when a bright light and a loud thump that not only shook him, but the room itself. Max was certainly very awake now. And knowing whom he would be meeting, Max began building his defenses. No one on Kaitos was to know how much strength his mind had developed.
“You claim the titles of Maxa, last son of the House Culver and Maxwell Culver, Captain of the starship USS Intrepid?”
An ancient voice, like gravel being rubbed together asked. Like a thousand years had passed since her last conversation or glass of water had been drunk.
“I am he. I stand with both names,” Max answered, blinded by anything but the bright overhead light. He rose to his feet.
“I do not like waiting. Step into the light so I may look at you,” the voice demanded. Max could only assume this was the voice of Selanna Muatan.
Max did so, though almost carried by her will and not his own. He began to build fortresses in his head against her. When he finished one, he would build another.
“Stop fidgeting. It has been a long time since I have seen a child. Do you not think I probed your mind while you slept?! I have been here the entire time and it took one hour for you to lay down your defenses so that I might see the deepest of your secrets. Maxa, son of Sala, betrothed to Daniel Martinez and Chista Ameen. Both would have made you happy, but the poison. Oh, the poison has changed you. It has given you strengths beyond your years.”
Max almost fell to the floor as a cacophony of voices, thousands if not hundreds of thousands, filled the room with whispers. It felt as if someone was driving ice picks into his temples. He had heard of temporal migraines in El-Aurians, but had never had one.
“Quiet!” Selanna Muatan commanded and the voices quieted, but didn’t cease.
“Eldest Selanna Muatan, is this the best defense you can offer against the End of Days?” A slightly nasal, better than thou voice asked.
Max recognized it immediately. Every captain was required to know Q’s appearance, his voice and mannerisms before attaining the rank. He was an entire semester of command school.
“He will suit your purposes and the purpose of those you think beneath you, Q. Now return to your vessel,” Muatan commanded, though gently.
Q’s nostrils flared with a heavy sigh before he disappeared into a flash that Max could barely see beyond his own overhead lighting. “Why is Q here? What do you mean End of Days? What is coming that I must defend against?”
As the overhead lights turned off and the normal lighting took its place, Max saw the Eldest, Selanna Muatan, sitting in a self-contained hover chair. She looked skeletal, if not catatonic. If he didn’t know better, he would think she was dead.
“You are curious, frightened even by my appearance? It matters not. This chair has supported my life for the last three hundred years. You are curious about this place too?”
Max looked around the library where distinct bottles, vases, canoptic jars and vessels stood, placed on hundreds of shelves and stacked like soldiers. They filled the room, from floor to ceiling and two to four jars deep. “Yes.” It was the one word that answered everything he wanted to ask.
“I may not possess a life affirming body, but like these bottles, this vessel still contains my mind, my memories and my strength. It would surprise you that I will soon take my place among these bottles. They contain our best El-Aurian minds of the past. There is great power here.”
“And Q?” Max asked. “Is he contained here too?” Max asked.
“No, another of our kind carries his bottle and she alone keeps him in check.”
“But there are Q here?” Max recognized in the response.
“Many. And more come each day to be preserved against the God Slayer and the End of Days. You, Maxa son of Sala, last son of the House Culver and Captain Maxwell Culver, you will have to defy this God Slayer before he goes too far. Already he has killed a God Being - Gary Mitchell.”
A single Klingon battle ship decloaked in orbit of the Changling planet. Commander War’roQ had not let go of the Sword of Kahless since it was discovered. He didn’t trust his crew. They would take it, quarrel over it and in the end destroy them all. One day soon, War’roQ would not need the ship and the peons beneath him might become worthy of it under his command. Until then, he would hold the sword and ponder their fates.
“We are in orbit now?” War’roQ asked.
“We are, Commander. Transporter standing by.”
War’roQ snorted and spat in disgust. “I have no need of transporters now,” he announced to his crew. “Qap’la!” War’roQ shouted before taking a step…
Onto the harsh ground beneath his boots. He liked the way it crunched beneath his feet, but that was about all he liked of this barren planet. A puddle of golden goo ebbed and flowed like a gentled ocean. But this was no ocean, unless that was how one perceived the Changlings in their natural form.
War’roQ found it disgusting.
He waded in them, up to his knees, because they would ignore his presence en masse unless he did this drastic thing. With a little more than psychotic mirth, he watched as three golden humanoids shaped into not-quite-right humanoids. The faces were rubbery, the ears were off. In fact there was something he had always disliked about the Changlings and their form.
The lead Changling solidified to appear as War’roQ, knee deep. His stern look had a suspicion about it. Rightly so, for War’roQ was there to kill them all. The pair behind him also took a solid form, but War’roQ only knew their leader. Odo, betrayer of the Dominion War.
Without him, the Klingons would never have to concern themselves with the Changlings or the Dominion ever again. Now, War’roQ would correct that mistake and watch these self proclaimed gods die.
Swinging his bat’leth over his head, he needn’t even have to strike Odo directly. Their Great Link was their weakness. Odo opened his mouth to speak, but the black sword of Kahless proved deadly true as a God slayer. Even to those self proclaimed. It appeared that Odo was trying to both speak and absorb the black trail of poisonous power that would kill every Changling at once. His body twisted, blackening like parchment too close to fire and then he was dust.
By the time War’roQ had returned to his place when he stepped through this world, the seas of gold were nothing more than ashes on the winds.
’So much for these Gods!’ he thought triumphantly. He had now bested thousands of them. Their sheer hubris had caused that, for they would never think a single Klingon would kill them all.
War’roQ stepped through and back onto his ship, growing in power every day. Soon, even the greatest of Gods would fall before him. ’I shall seek out a favorite of the humans next,’ War’roQ thought.
The last son of Duras knew which particular human God figure he would strike down next. ’I come for you, Yahweh or Allah, or both. Though no longer a worshipped God, the reverence you have garnered will be your doom. I, War’roQ, last son of Duras demand your blood!’.
Max felt a punch land right in his solar plexus and the wind was instantly knocked out of him. He fell backwards into a chair that hadn’t been there before. His vision blacked, even in the bright light of the giant library. Small white orbs danced within the darkness.
After some length of time, minutes or even hours, his ability to think returned. He realized he was breathing normally and Selanna Muatan sat patiently at her desk still. Max readjuted himself and his uniform. “What was that?! he finally managed to ask.
“The deaths of a hundred million shapeshifters, whom you call Changlings, were just killed by the God Slayer so that a hundred million more could escape,” the Eldest explained. “They presented themselves as Gods - though it be false - and have now paid a terrible price.”
“Half of their people murdered and they will now make for the farthest reaches of the Gamma Quadrant to live in silence. You will not see their like again, not for a thousand years or more,” she explained.
“The walls of the Pleroma are weakening. The Gods are dying.”
“Who could stand against this God Slayer?”
“A simple man, there is rumor that he is the last son of his House. Does it not sound like providence to see this last son of a House slain by the last son of an El-Aurian House?”
Max’s eyes narrowed as he stood from the chair, having regained his full faculties. “You suggest I might kill this God Slayer?!” Max asked, confused to say the least.
“Maxa, son of Sala, last son of the House Culver, destroyer of the God Slayer, Eternal…it has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?”
“How would I accomplish this?” Max asked, the foolish words escaping him without logical reasoning.
“You are in possession of the Rings, yes?” she asked rhetorically. “You shall have to seek out the remaining weapons from the last God War. The husk of El-Auria. The star that can no longer be seen. The den of the enemy and anywhere else that instinct drives you. You must seek out an unfound Orb of the Prophets, before they are destroyed.”
“You will not be alone in this. There will be many who will help. There’s even a Q aboard your small ship, hiding in plain sight. You will require their help soon, I think.”
“But be warned, there will be consequences you can not foresee if you choose to watch the universe fall into dark nothingness. There will also be consequences that you will incur should you say yes.”
“Is there no one else?” Max asked. “No one more capable?”
“For generations, we have bred our people in the old ways, in hope of creating a vast mind with your powers. There has been no one since me to obtain the power you possess - even if by accident.”
“Then it must be me,” Max agreed.
“There is no other. You will ascend before you meet the God Slayer. You will become more than Q, more than the God Slayer, you will become an Eternal. Unending. This is why you will not know love and you will forget Daniel and Chista as they will forget you. Not lover will remember their connection to you, mercifully enough neither will you!”
Max blinked and instantly felt something was wrong. Time had just been changed, but he knew he had agreed somehow. It was an unsettling experience.
“Later, after, you will leave this plane of existence, for you see, it would be a sorrow to look at every person and know their fate because you make it so.”
Max could barely understand what the Eldest was telling him, but he knew it was true. His mind was growing each day and, sooner or later, he would ascend to destroy this God Slayer. He would need help, though. Both in growing strength of his powers and in wisdom.
“I can see your thoughts,” Selanna Muatan answered quietly. “I have summoned a champion to assist you. From where or whence he will come, I know not. Rest assured, he will come as soon as he receives the summons. You must also seek the Q hiding on your little ship. I think I can help with that.” She smiled gently.
“My time ends with your beginning. The Alpha and the Omega.” She looked down onto her desk where a dainty perfume bottle appeared. It was very old fashioned, but also brand new. “All that I am ends now.”
Max watched as the Eldest seemed to disappear like mist into the perfume bottle and the room around them opened to the vast library of bottles and jars, Q hiding from something even they feared. What scared the Q?’
Looking at the Eldest, he could see she was no more. Max walked to her desk and unconsciously pocketed the perfume bottle, before checking Selanna Muatan’s pulse. The skin was dry as parchment, sallow and grey. She had died right there in his presence.
’In your mind,’ a woman’s voice answered back faintly.
He was about to run for medical when they barged through the door and began an at attempt life saving procedures on Selanna. They had to know she was over three thousand years old, she wasn’t coming back.
A pair of security guards grabbed Max by his jacket. “What do you want with him, sir?”
“I watched their entire exchange,” the man with the severe eyebrows answered. “He did not touch the Eldest, except to confirm she passed. He has no guilt here.”
“Get him out of my sight. We have truly lost the best of us today. After her death announcement, there will be a day of mourning. Her preferred remains will be put into place while it lays in state, we shall transfer her essence to her glass parfumerie.”
“Where will it end?” The serious man questioned.
Max walked out into the morning sun, shedding the stuffiness of the Capitol Building for fresh air. With each breath, he felt better. He shrugged, with the rest of his last day off he decided to go home to his parent and his granddad.
Maybe the old man had some idea of whatever he had just been talking about, but like a dream, the details were fading away. And in his spare time, he walled off the stronger areas of his inherited powers. He just wanted to be normal for a while.
Because Max had a feeling that something terrible was coming and because he felt like he had sacrificed far too much to see this thing through.
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