Shannon O'Reilly was bullied and everything his older sister wasn't. When his sister Sarah gives him a chance to change things through a single wish things don't go as planned.     I Wish: Book 5 Chapter 15 Memorial By Amethyst

With the situation now decidedly less tense, everyone seemed to relax, at least until Ziralin’s stomach growled loudly. We couldn’t be sure when the last time that Ellie and Ziralin had eaten was and it had definitely been a while for me, Rebecca, Lisa, and Michelle. That meal had been followed by me and Rebecca flying through the mountains as fast as we could while carrying Michelle and Lisa. We hadn’t stopped for breaks and then after that, we had made our way through the city as Michelle tracked Ellie and Ziralin by scent, and there had been a lot of fights and spells cast on the way.

As a result, it seemed that we were all very hungry. So we grabbed some supplies out of what turned out to be Jennifer’s portable bunker and we took the time to make a meal and eat it together. It wasn’t anything special, just some veggies and pasta with some sort of meat that Mason had determined was safe and had dried and salted to keep longer, all made up into a thick and filling stew. He had also made a bunch of jerky from the meat, which wasn’t half bad. Along with some sodas and some crackers, it was a pretty good meal, especially the company after being away from my friends for so long. As we ate, Jen and Mason told us what had happened to them since arriving on Nhekar.

They had arrived in what seemed to be a desert, much like Rebecca and I had. It wasn’t made of black sand like the one we were in but desolate red dirt and stone canyons for as far as the eye could see. Jen said it kind of reminded her of pictures that she had seen of Arizona or Mars. They also realized early on that there was no magick energy for them to draw on in their Celestial forms. They had been hoping to just fly over the desert while they searched for the rest of us but seeing that they were effectively grounded and couldn’t use their Celestial abilities, they were forced to just pick a direction and walk.

Mason was sure of their direction from the start, he had a very strong sense that there was something important in the direction that they were traveling and that we would find them there. So they followed his instincts and his psychic gift helped them to avoid danger, for the most part. There wasn’t much alive, at least that they saw, and what there was avoided them at first as they followed the trail that Mason had chosen. Their luck ran out six days ago.

“So, we were making our way through this really narrow canyon,” Jennifer explained as we all listened intently, “when BAM! This pack of freaking velociraptors come running out of a cave straight at us.”

Rebecca looked at me as if to say, “And this is your best friend?” before turning to Jen and interrupting her. “You can’t be serious. I mean sure, I know there are some nasty predators out there, I saw the corpse of the Tuskreaper that Shannon killed. Okay maybe not the whole thing, but its guts were all over the place and its head was whole. That thing was scary enough without being attached to a body. We saw some big bear-like things in the forest too, but velociraptors?”

“I’m totally serious here!” Jen vowed, crossing her heart.

“She is,” Mason interjected. “They probably weren’t exactly like the velociraptors from our world millions of years ago but they looked pretty damn close, not to mention scary as hell coming at you in a pack. We had to say to hell with it and change to our Celestial forms, planning to use what little magick energy that we did have stored to fly up to the top of the canyon and get away from them.”

“But the leading one grabbed on to Mason’s leg when we did that. It was a good thing that his Celestial form comes with that shield and head-to-toe armor or that thing would have taken part of his leg off. You should see the bruises, they’re still fading,” Jennifer said as she snuggled closer to her boyfriend and softly caressed his right leg.

“That damn thing held on, all the way to the top of the canyon wall, and I had to beat it to death with my shield before I could get it to let go. And I figured that turnabout was fair play, so now we’re eating it,” Mason said with a grin.

“You mean… this is…?” Ellie asked as she looked dubiously at her stew.

“Yup, waste not, want not,” Mason said, still grinning from ear to ear.

“It’s actually not that bad,” Rebecca said with a shrug as she continued eating her jerky.

I took a bite of the jerky and Rebecca was right, it wasn’t all that bad. I had certainly eaten worse things. It was while I was pondering that Jen continued the story. “Anyway, after Mason pried that thing off his leg, we saw this place way off in the distance. As soon as we saw it, Mason knew that this was the place that we needed to go to. It turns out that it’s a huge monument to the people who lived here before a disaster wiped them all out. I think that they knew that they were going extinct, so they built this place to let people who came to this planet know who they were.”

Once we were finished eating I was anxious to find Sarah and Annie but Jen insisted that we take a look at her discovery first. “C’mon, guys, this is epic!” she enthused as she half dragged me and Ziralin to one of the doors. Apparently, this was some sort of antechamber and the door that we were heading to was where the main event was. The door on the other side of the room led outside.

I had to admit that I was curious as she dragged us along and the others followed behind, so I figured that we would humor her and look at whatever statue with alien writing was inside the room that we were heading toward. Even if we couldn’t read it, we might learn something interesting and it wouldn’t hurt to pay our respects since we were here anyway. Only what we found wasn’t just some statue with alien writing.

The room was smaller than I expected, much smaller than the antechamber, maybe ten by ten feet square. The only thing in the room was a black pedestal that was roughly a foot square and four feet in height. The top surface seemed to emit a glow similar to the strange pale blue lights in the ceiling, only the glow was gold instead of blue. There were also these two odd tentacle-looking things emerging from the sides of the pedestal that looked to be made of the same black metal.

“One of you put your hands on the top,” Jen encouraged. “Only one person can use it at a time but there is so much information in there and the rest of us can at least watch. I’ve been using it off and on since we got here three days ago to try to learn as much about them as I can.”

Since I seemed to be the closest and nobody else was volunteering, I gently placed my hands on the glowing gold surface. I almost yanked them right off again once those two tentacle things started to move and lit up. In an instant they were moving up and down my body, the ‘heads’ hovering mere millimeters away and making humming sounds as the lights bathed my skin.

Finally, the two tentacles reached up to touch either side of my head and I heard that slight humming increase for a moment before a translucent image of what I assumed was one of the planet’s former residents appeared before my eyes. She was naked and very obviously female, and their species didn’t look too much different from humans.

If she was anything to go by, they were bipedal with light purple skin and had opposable thumbs and three long fingers on each hand. Her limbs were long and slender and her face a little flat with an almost feline nose and small round ears on the sides of her head that were higher than on a human’s head, almost on top. She had large dark eyes that had no whites, or even irises from the look of it, and her dark purple hair seemed to cover not only the top of her head but also around her neck like a lion’s mane.

Once the humming ceased I heard and saw the image say, -= Scan complete. Mental interface achieved. Welcome traveler, and thank you for visiting the Sanori Memorial. This planet was once home to the Sanori people and this archive contains all that is known of our culture, history, biology, and technology. This unit will respond to your thoughts and engage with you in your own language so that you may learn about our people. =-

“Damn. If this one device is any indication, these people were a lot more advanced than on my Earth. I wonder how they got wiped out,” I thought as I stared at the hologram.

-= Our sun was reaching the end of its natural life, at least in a state that the people on our planet could survive, =- the image responded to my errant thought. -= Desperate to save our home and our people from this disaster, we designed a technology to preserve it in its red giant stage. It required the use of a type of energy that we had only recently discovered and barely understood. In using it we saved our sun and doomed ourselves. =-

“What kind of technology could possibly prevent the death of a star?” I wondered aloud in awe.

The image before me changed to show a view of a red star encircled by a massive structure, almost like an orb-shaped web. -= The Nisadri Web was designed to use the Sun’s own energy to power a system that would create helium and hydrogen and inject them directly into the Sun’s core. It was the single greatest technological achievement in our history. =-

“That’s no moon,” I heard Rebecca say in awe behind me. Jeez, all the teasing she had given me about being a geek and she lets out a Star Wars reference? I was so going to rib her about that later.

“Holy crap!” I sputtered as I stared at the image and processed what the hologram had said. “That thing is kinda like a reverse Dyson Sphere! How the hell could they just ‘produce’ helium and hydrogen though? Let alone inject it into the Sun’s core?”

-= Devices interfacing with large korab crystals were included in the Nisadri Web to produce the necessary elements and transport them into the core. It was determined that the korab crystals would absorb ambient universal essence emitted by the Sun, allowing these devices to work indefinitely without being replaced, =- the now disembodied voice replied.

“Korab crystals? She’s probably talking about those okka crystals,” I told the others thoughtfully.

The image changed again to a familiar-looking purple crystal. -= Korab crystals were discovered by Ogan Korab. They are a rare type of crystal that we discovered absorbs and stores a type of energy that we had never known of previously. This energy was named universal essence. It was named this because once we learned to identify it, we were able to detect it everywhere; in the earth, the air, and even being emitted by the Sun itself. As we searched for ways to utilize this power we discovered that rare individuals could, when in direct contact with a korab crystal, utilize that power and create devices that could do things previously undreamed of by our people. =-

Since the voice had just confirmed my suspicion, I had a very bad feeling about where this was going. They used a power that they couldn’t possibly fully understand yet and I had a sinking suspicion that it bit them in the collective ass. This was exactly why Sarah had taught me that we couldn’t let the general population learn about magick. “Let me guess, there was a problem with either the korab crystals or the universal essence when the Nisadri Web went active.”

-= Correct, =- the hologram agreed as it returned to the appearance of the lavender-skinned woman. -= As the Nisadri web was activated there was an unexpected chain reaction after a solar flare erupted, causing a solar storm of unprecedented strength. The devastating storm rendered much of our technology useless, killed off nearly all life, and likely permanently damaged the flow of universal essence on our planet. Those few of the Sanori to survive lived long enough to build this monument before succumbing to radiation sickness. =-

I took a step back my guts twisted in knots. As soon as my hands left the top of the pedestal the tentacles lowered back to the sides and the small room fell into a deathly silence. We were all barely able to breathe, let alone figure out what to say. This place wasn’t just an archive and a monument, it was a cautionary tale too. “You know, if Sarah were here, she would be saying that this is exactly why the existence of magick can’t become common knowledge,” Ziralin pointed out, breaking the silence as she wrapped me up in her arms.

“Yeah, this is why my mom says that magick is a responsibility and privilege, not a right,” Ellie agreed.

“Fuck, Shannon, even after you changed me I thought that you were being a bit extreme about how magick becoming common knowledge would be a bad thing. I thought, ‘What’s the worst that could happen? I guess you were right,” Rebecca said, shaking her head with a stunned look on her face.

“This, right here. This is the worst that could happen,” Lisa muttered grimly as she held Michelle close.

Michelle leaned into her girlfriend’s embrace turning her head away from the pedestal. “As interesting as learning about the Sanori might be, I really want to get the fuck out of here now. This isn’t a memorial, it’s a fucking tomb. I feel like I’m standing in the middle of the biggest mass grave in history.”

“Me too,” Jennifer agreed in a hushed tone, “this isn’t so epic anymore.”

“Let’s go pack up our stuff, Jen,” Mason said, pulling her along toward the door. “The sooner that we can get out of here, the better. We learned exactly what we needed to.”

The others quickly followed and Ziralin and I were the last to leave the room. “It’s sad really, they used a power that they didn’t comprehend to prevent their sun from being destroyed and save their people. In doing it, they saved the sun but caused their own destruction. Now there’s nobody left to learn their lesson or remember them,” I said with a sad shake of my head.

“There’s us, Babe,” my Familiar/Fiancée said so softly that it barely reached my ears, even as close as she was holding me. “I don’t think that I’ll ever forget the Sanori or what we learned here today as long as I live. I don’t think that any of us will.”

I nodded as we walked, silently agreeing with her since I couldn’t think of anything else that could be said about the topic. Instead, I took a deep breath as we walked into the antechamber where Jen and Mason were hurriedly packing things back in Jen’s portable bunker. Then I said, “Let’s go find Annie and my sister so we can get the hell off of this cursed rock.”

There was no disagreement as everyone helped Jen and Mason finish putting things away as quickly as possible. I think that we all just wanted to leave Nhekar before something else terrible could happen. Jen had barely finished putting her portal cloth in her backpack with its collapsible poles before I focused on my sister and cast the portal that would reunite us all.