The planet Ganlomb was a lush tropical world on the edge of the known Galaxy. Its inhabitants, also called Ganlomb on most indexes, were a primarily female society. Their skin hue typically ranged on the blue to violet scale but their shared dominant feature was pronounced long pointy ears that jutted out horizontally. Azonne Le was a native, glad to see the glow of her home world once more. Her skin was colored pink while short neck-length hair just a shade of purple was slicked back behind her medium-length ears. On Ganlomb, ear length equated to age; Azonne was what one could qualify as a young adult.

On her face, tattooed above and below her right eye were three black arrowheads; two above her eyebrow and one just below her lower lid. Her uniform was orange and black metallic armor that moved like it was her second skin. On her chest was a white circle surrounded by also white arrowheads; a sun and a sign that she carried the most powerful weapons in the universe: a golden ring on each hand, each carved with geometric shapes into the metal, known as the Cyntaff.

Azonne Le was the latest in a lineage that stretched back to the dawn of time and beyond; it’s been a small nightmare. Azonne has spent the last 6 orbital cycles off-world and bouncing across the galaxy watching children die. It’s not supposed to be like this.

Are you glad to be home? Spoke the voice in her mind, known as The First and the source of power she channeled through her two rings. It served as part AI companion, part personal assistant, to each successive ring-bearer and so on until, presumably, the end of time. Before her, Ganlomb was a colossal green marble with wispy white patches of cloud that imperceptibly crawled across the thin blue atmosphere. She floated about 100 light-seconds from the planet and sighed.

“Of course,” she replied, Azonne had grown into the habit of speaking out loud to the First even though she didn't have to. The protective yellow light aura that surrounded her allowed her to speak freely in the void, and talking in her head made her feel strange. With a thought and a slight burst of energy, she propelled forward toward the planet. Moments later she was bursting through the atmosphere, white-hot flames trying and failing to cling to her aura, dissipating off it like water evaporating off hot asphalt.

The lush greenery that made up the majority of the surface eventually gave way to glittering towers made of glass. The side of her head buzzed, it was an incoming hail from the Protectorate. Azonne sighed heavily, she had hoped they wouldn’t want to personally touch base. In her peripheral vision a small window popped up, it was a waveform that stretched and expanded as the person on the other line spoke.

“Light Bringer, this is a surprise," said the voice. "Why are you back home already? Is something wrong?"

“No I-I said I’d come back to speak to the next class of younglings, remember?” Azonne grimaced and shut her eyes.

“Oh,” and the line went silent. “Of course, how could we forget.”

Probably because I said it off-handedly, Azonne mused. “I’m just going to see my grandmother and then I will touch base with you all in the morning.”

“Very well, see you then Light Bringer.” The call ended as she lowered her altitude, deeper into the city itself. Those who caught sight of her stopped what they were doing, their hushed whispers willing themselves to be heard. As she dropped, the skyscrapers floated away, broken up by the thick steel platform that served as support. That continued for another few feet until she was greeted by the city within a city.

Azonne dodged the oncoming elevator on its way back to the Upper City and buildings built in the old style greeted her enthusiastically. Her aura served as greater illumination than the house lights scattered across the ceiling, her light could be seen as far as a mile away. Azonne landed among a thick flood of Ganlomb that quickly parted to give her space; Azonne smiled awkwardly while avoiding their stares. Up there she was an interesting curiosity but down here she was something revered.

The sea of people parted further as she walked toward a storefront. It was in better shape than compared to everything around it, although shades of rust and disrepair littered spots of the outer facade. She pressed her palm to the metal plate situated over to the side of the main entrance and it slid open vertically with a cranky whine. It didn't shock her that her palm was still encoded after all this time.

"Grandmother," she uttered after the door screeched behind her. A short squat of a creature was huddled over a large table, shoulders hunched forward as it worked over something. The area was small and cluttered; electronic detritus littered every corner. A small light shone over the tiny person's head, putting a shine to their stringy white hair and dull purple skin with ears so long they hung dead at the sides nearly touching the floor. The being froze when Azonne spoke and it glanced over their shoulder. The older Ganlomb's eyes grew wide when she noticed who it was.

"Azzy!" Grandmother let out a boisterous laugh as she rushed her. Her quickness was surprising, large arms wrapped Azonne up so tight she whistled out a tiny bit. Grandmother put her down and looked up at her, her eye level was only about waist-high, but she kept an affectionate hold onto her hand; she was proud of her. "I didn't think I'd see you so soon after being chosen!" She said to her.

"It's been 6 cycles, grandmother," she smiled for what felt like the first time in ages. Grandmother noticed this.

“What’s wrong, child?” She asked and pulled Azonne further inside. “Come! Sit! You must tell me of your adventures in the void.” Azonne blushed a bit, her skin would turn a mauve color whenever that happened. Grandmother took her arm and led her closer to the light.

"Grandmother...," Azonne didn’t even know where to start, her eyes felt heavy but were kept afloat by the modicum of joy she had for seeing grandmother again after so long.

"Have you fought it?"

“All I do is fight it,” Azonne said softly. Azonne took a deep breath before saying, “Grandmother…I’m sorry…but I think it’s here.”

***

A young girl and her friend play in purple and green fields. The grass reached the child's chest, large rods slapped against it needlessly. Under her, the grass moved and moved, her friend was short and traveled like a mite growling under the carpet. In a few feet, the grass gave way to a lonely tree that stood proud silhouetted in the orange and gray sky. Black leaves barely clung to emaciated limbs that swayed in the mild wind. She emerged dusting pollen from her overalls and brushing the leaves from her purple hair; her friend was close behind.

“You seem troubled Azonne,” it said. It was a black blob that shifted and twisted on whims with the skin shining under the setting sun like an oil slick; it morphed and became a tar-colored rabbit before nuzzling up next to her. The young girl pressed her back to the tree trunk and huffed.

“Everyone was mean today,” she lamented. Her pink-colored skin turned a deeper shade at the utterance. The creature shifted and moved, fifty little eyes opened upon its skin and warbled up and down its body.

And teeth.

So many teeth.

***

Azonne woke up in a cold sweat. The dream again. Her skin color was a deeper shade from the panic just like it had been in the dream. They were becoming a regular occurrence lately, it was getting old. Azonne craved feeling something else besides this constant dread and found herself wanting.

Azonne, I recommend you continue to rest; sunrise is still an hour away yet.

“I’m already awake,” she sighed and moved her legs off of the tiny bed. Grandmother had left her small room untouched since she left and seeing all her old toys and knick-knacks forced her to crack a smile. “I’m just being defeatist aren’t I?”

What you feel is valid Azonne, I am worried as well; we’ll get through it together, as it has always gone.

Somehow that didn’t help; Azonne laid back on the bed with a huff and opened a video window in her mind. It was a feed of the Upper City skyline, broadcast specifically for the denizens of the Lower City; she was going to at least catch the sunrise while she was here.

***

“Before there was anything; before there was even time; there was a great darkness.” Azonne sat surrounded by 12 little young ones in an Upper City classroom. Every eye locked on to her as she spoke. “It fed, and spread, and had no equal. Suddenly, an explosion; suddenly, there was light. The light spread and gave birth to our universe, and that darkness…?” She glanced around. “…it was not happy.”

Azonne let the pause hang in the air as she looked at every wide eye fixed on her at that moment. She studied each face briefly before moving on to the next; whatever she was looking for had not yet shown itself.

“This is a tale I was told when I was around your age,” she continued. “But what I’ve found out since being chosen is that almost every civilization has a similar story.” The children glanced around at each other, they were oblivious. How could they not be? She was to them what her elders were to her.

“Now with the light, came the Balance. The Balance acted as chains for this darkness; conscripted into a role that it had to play and thus it became known as the Nameless." Azonne felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand at attention. Just thinking of the creature chilled her. Thus far she’s only had to deal with its influence; confrontations against the monster were thus far only confined to memories in her possession.

Azonne swallowed air down hard and continued, "As the light spread throughout the universe, a fraction of that energy coalesced and became sentient; this became known as the First. Tasked with battling the enraged and conscripted monster, the two fought for billions of years until they were mortally wounded. That brief period was the first time the balance had been broken but not the last."

A small voice spoke out, “What happened then?” Azonne smiled at the little face, it was a pleasant distraction.

"Their power,” she replied. “Their very essence and life were placed into these," and she held up her left fist, showing off one of the golden rings. “Creating the Mantle of C’hiad.” Its bright gold band shimmered under the incandescent light of the classroom. Ancient markings were etched into the side and face and an exact duplicate sat on her right hand.

“The rings were forged by a society whose name was lost to time eons ago; one of the first civilizations. The only trace of their existence remains right here,” Azonne took an index finger and tapped her temple.

“The rings were first bequeathed to a female warrior of their tribe and since then they’ve been passed down to another female of another species and another and another until…it came to me.”

“How did you get chosen?!” Another voice asked.

“I don’t know,” Azonne laughed. She remembered when she had asked the same of her direct predecessor, D’Grav. “None of us know until it’s time to choose a new successor. But, each ring bearer passes on a part of themselves when they move on. All their experiences, their skills, all of it live on within me.

“Eventually, whatever I learn will be given to the next person and so it will go,” Azonne’s eye twitched; something changed in the electromagnetic spectrum; imperceptible. The little hairs on the back of her neck stood at attention and a little hand shot up. Azonne’s eye found the child’s and she composed herself.

“What is this darkness?” The little one asked.

She thought about it, the words flowed out of her but not from her: “It is pain. It is hate. It is terror. It is all the things that scare you given a form. When darkness touches a world it spreads nothing but corruption; left unchecked those worlds are gone.” The air was still and Azonne motioned to herself. “That is where I and my predecessors come in; it is our purpose.”

“And what is that?” The same child again; a thick black globule pooled around its nose before a large chunk siphoned itself free to collide on the floor.

“We preserve the balance.”

The explosion was sudden yet silent. If not for the sheer force felt against her skin, Azonne would never have been the wiser. All beings in a small radius around the dark young one had disintegrated, leaving behind thick black pools of bubbling fluid. The child itself jerked unnaturally while oily black tendrils slithered up and out from all its pores and orifices.

The room filled with an unnatural screeching and buzzing as this black mass rose higher. Azonne closed her eyes and raised a fist, the ring sparked and flashed before super-hot plasma exploded outward in a brilliant light that engulfed the child-creature. More screeching and wailing greeted her when she raised her other fist; the energy beam grew wider and more intense. Azonne swallowed hard, this was what had to be done; what she had done over and over again.

The child’s skin bubbled under the intense heat and forced Azonne to shut her eyes. She hated this; always a child; always ending the same. She concentrated further and the heat amplified.

Please just let this be over, she thought. With a final screech, the darkness was burned away, disintegrated into dust and gas which swirled around and mixed in with smoke once she had stopped firing. The entire room was half a crater. Azonne dropped to her knees, exhausted. This was her job, she told herself again, and again, and again.

She had to preserve the balance, no matter the cost.

A large explosion in the distance shook Azonne out of her mini-trance. She rose to her feet and walked over to the smoking hole that used to be a wall. Building high in the sky, Azonne stared across the Upper City. There, in the center: black smoke touched the sky.

Azonne hurtled up and away from the crater, she banked low and aimed herself in the direction of the smoke. She whizzed past glass structures as the entrance to the Lower City rushed at her. It was a big gaping hole that now vomited black crud. She fired off an energy beam ahead of her to pierce through the viscous mess bubbling out. How is this happening? She thought. The First, finally, was there to answer:

Picking up multiple manifestation points across the planet.

“At once?!” She yelled as she dove through the freshly made hole she had created, it sealed itself behind her as she passed through it. Screaming filled her ears from the city below; a living nightmare. Black ooze leaked from every crack, every hole, and every seal as hundreds of Ganlomb fought and screamed with one another and sometimes at nothing at all.

Yes; this is alarming. It shouldn’t be able to do this, unless-

“Unless the balance is broken,” she responded as she hovered above the chaos. She swallowed heavily at the carnage below her; she had heard all the stories and could experience them firsthand thanks to the shared memory of her lineage. Very few before her had experienced a break in the balance; to be here and this strong? The implication was clear and she grew fearful.

There was so much violence around her that it was tough for her to know what to do next. A group of Ganlomb surrounded and stomped a lifeless figure on the ground over there; another threw itself off their balcony, shrieking; black hands and faces bizarrely began to emerge out from the black pools forming across the lower city. Any attempt to recall any past experiences utterly failed; panic had crept in. Azonne’s focus quickly became her grandmother’s storefront and she rocketed there in an instant.

Shadow beings emerged all around her as she landed, their two-dimensional nature made her skin crawl. They struck at her but their blows bounced uselessly off her protective aura. With a thought, she expanded it outward to push them away. Azonne approached the door, and reached out to the pressure plate, when–with a piercing sound–it blew off its track and collided with her. The force from the impact pushed her back a few feet but her aura had kept her standing, a quick pulse of energy seconds later sent the door flying off of her.

Black tendrils exploded from the gaping maw that was the doorway to her grandmother’s shop and raced at her. Azonne disintegrated one with a quick and dirty burst from her left hand but the second proved too quick: it pierced through her aura and impaled her shoulder violently. The inky black pierced through and out her back before curling up a sort of makeshift hook to lift her off the ground. The pain was intense, she felt unable to concentrate as it dragged her toward the door.

Black ooze poured out from her wound and attempted to engulf and wrap around her which snapped her out of her funk. With a guttural scream, light exploded from within her turning the vine and the area immediately surrounding her into ash and dust. Azonne collapsed to one knee; her breath was heavy.

That was when it stepped out.

All four-foot-nothing of her grandmother’s frame sauntered out from a black hole but it walked as if it were five times bigger. Black slime dripped from every pore, while long heavy ears trailed behind it with every step leaving a wake of black grossness. It emerged from the store with black strands pulling away from it like melted cheese; as if it were breaking free of webbing crafted by a monstrous spider.

“AzAzAzonnezonnezonne, atatat lastlastlast,” it spoke as if it were thousands of voices somehow funneled into a singular prism and it echoed across her mind; she squinted. Blacker puss exploded from it, causing her grandmother to morph and grow unnaturally. Azonne scanned around her, all the other Ganlomb had stopped fighting and they all faced her; hundreds of faceless shadows.

“I’veI’veI’ve learnlearnlearned muchmuchmuch,” it sputtered as black discharge poured from monster-grandmother's mouth and bubbled like freshly molten lava. Azonne raised a fist and stood slowly while The First relayed options available to her instantly. It was hard for her to focus, the weight of what was happening dulled her synaptic pulses.

The darkness ignored her and continued to speak, it towered above her now, different parts of it jerking in every direction as it went on. “Youyouyou willwillwill bebebe thethethe lastlastlast.”

The giant mass of oil collapsed on top of her, Azonne dashed backward and fired off a beam of hard light from her right hand that collided with the mass and sent thick heavy globules everywhere. She swung her fist to her right and the hard light beam collided with the growing crowd of corrupted Ganlomb forming. Azonne rose 20 feet into the air and with her left hand fired a concentrated beam of plasma radiation that cut the mass into two pieces and it shrieked horribly. Azonne looked around then turned her gaze to the Upper City entrance, it was sealed shut by black goop as if she had never passed through it at all.

Azonne crouched low, drawing in energy. A tickle hit the back of her skull; a feeling; a memory that fluttered around her sense of self. Her direct predecessor, cycles ago, once met a human man. The tales told about him heralded him as The Greatest Hero in the Verse. It was a slight exaggeration, but this human's feats of strength were legendary even here on Ganlomb.

She detonated upward toward the hole, the energy she had gathered within her now exploded from her chest and made her white-hot. She shut her eyes upon impact with the black bile that clogged the entrance. With a hiss the blackness split and shrieked, ethereal voices taunted her as she pushed through.

Thousands more voices joined in with each second; no doubt it was further spreading across the planet. She blocked it out; almost through. The memory had surfaced for a reason, it had to be. She needed help. She needed to get off-planet. She exploded free from the goop, and finally, in the Upper City, she continued to climb higher still.

Azonne rose above the glittering towers of her home city, all the while she ignored the horror all around her. Panicked emergency calls flooded her HUD and COMM system. Children asked for their mothers while the upper class cried for their handlers. And the screaming; so much screaming. Azonne was beyond the atmosphere not a moment too soon. Tears welled up on the edges of her eye sockets while her aura caught fire as she opened a gate into the Bleed.

To Izanami, in the Brachium system.

Where Captain Steel called home.