The observation decks of an Explorerhawk Class starship were far more than galleries with large external view-ports; they were gardens, with flowers and trees, paths and pools, places where a Dominion-born crew could come to relax and bathe in the essential energies of their home-realm's LifeStar, without which they could not survive. Under Ravani's command, Dominion Five had a living crew of one, and she had no need of the LifeStar's energy, but the gardens were maintained so that the galleries could be used for diplomatic gatherings - or meetings such as the one Ravani was about to have with the curious being the XSI report had codenamed "Splinter".

The girl was already present when Ravani arrived, the child-like figure with mother-of-pearl skin sitting quietly under a tree, glancing around now and again as though this was her first day at a new school, and she was waiting to be shown around. At first glance, the girl was easily mistaken for a juvenile, but on closer examination, one could quickly tell she was an adult, albeit of a species whose grown height was hardly more than that of a pre-adult of most other similar species, and Ravani kept that in mind as she approached - in fact, she had little more than that to work with.

Female; species unknown, the report had said. Moderate psionic potential, no evidence of developed skills. Substantial memory impairment recorded, caused in high probability by presence of crystalline artefact...

Ravani had sighed as she read those words, for she knew that XSI were capable of better than that. Dominion's EXtraordinary Science and Investigation division was a strong team of intelligent and skilled agents, with whom the Mystalornan spell-caster had worked as a magical advisor, and after some early jitters, they had established a solid chain of success. They had discovered - and corrected a significant flaw in the new Predator Class attack ships, after the death of one of the crew of the newly-launched Orca; they had saved the crew of the Battlehawk Song Of The Burning Heart after that ship had suffered catastrophic failures during a patrol of The Hyperstream; they had even discovered a new form of life in Dominion - a species of metal-eating "parasite" evolved from skin cells shed from the mighty space-dwelling "Dragon Of Dominion" - and found a way to protect all Dominion's ships from them, without causing the creatures any harm...

This one, Ravani had to deal with on her own, and after her experience on Zone Gamma, her confidence was at its lowest ever ebb, but the Mystalornan was not going to let that get in her way. After all she'd been through, she was damned if she was going to fail.

"Splinter" looked straight ahead at Ravani as the dark Mystalornan drew near, simultaneously fascinated and a little afraid. This isn't an interrogation, Ravani reminded herself. Take it easy - we have no idea what the girl can actually do...

The spell-caster carefully chose a seat - not directly in front of the girl, and not too close - and after a few seconds of cautious silence, Ravani spoke. "Hello", she said, softly. "It's nice that you could be here today..."

"Nice", murmured the girl. "Yes. Quiet. The voice - I can barely hear it now."

Ravani had hoped to follow her opening by volunteering her name, starting a chain of enquiry that she'd hoped would reveal the girl's name, but Splinter had jumped ahead, giving the spell-caster something that couldn't be ignored. "What voice is that?", Ravani asked. "Someone you know?"

As though caught in a dream, the girl raised a hand towards her forehead, where the "splinter" from which her codenamed was derived was embedded, but she didn't quite touch the hand-long "horn" of transparent crystal. "I - I can't remember a time when I haven't heard it", she almost-whispered. "It's always there... it was louder before, in that other place. The cold place."

Ah good - we have something in common, thought Ravani. "I hated that place, too", she said. "It made me feel as though..."

"...I was being hollowed out, from the inside", Splinter interrupted - saying the exact words Ravani had had in mind.

The Mystalornan had felt no telepathic or mystical intrusion into her thoughts, and she felt equally intrigued and uneasy. Just how did she do that?, wondered the spell-caster. Did - did the planetoid eat away at my personal defences, too?

Again, Splinter surprised Ravani. "I... feel things, through... this", said the girl, her hand again moving towards the crystal "horn", once more never touching it. "That's why he kept me..."

"'He'? The White Beast?", Ravani enquired, and the girl nodded, meekly. "Did he give you the crystal?", the spell-caster then added, sensing an opening by way of the past.

"No", murmured Splinter, shaking her head so gently that the gesture barely disturbed her fine silver-grey hair. "It came long before him. He's gone now - I feel... nothing of him left. Gone - totally gone - only nightmares remain. Nightmares and stones."

Splinter's attention seemed to wane at that point - the report had mentioned that the girl's mind tended to wander, and Ravani felt she had to move quickly, or squander all she had so far gained. "Stones - and crystals?", she ventured. "Please, tell me more about the crystal."

The girl tilted her head towards Ravani, and gazed at the Mystalornan with eyebrows raised. "Why do you feel familiar?", Splinter asked, her voice more firm and focussed than ever before - she sounded quite awake instead of being ever on the verge of falling asleep. "Are - are we the same people...?"

How much do I tell her?, thought Ravani. Too little - or too much...?

"The crystal comes from the same place that I do", the spell-caster replied. "That is what you are sensing, I believe-"

"No", declared Splinter. "That is only - only part of it. there is more - the mother... and the father."

"You're smarter than I thought", Ravani replied openly, knowing her mind was no longer a secure sanctuary for her thoughts. "The shard is a crystallised fragment of the psychic essence of a unique being. - her mother was, and still is, the greatest of my people, and her father was a great spell-caster, a being aspiring to godhood."

Splinter's reaction made Ravani wonder whether she had possibly gone too far, too soon. The girl seemed to slip back into her former drowsy state, warily touching the skin close to the base of her "horn", and murmuring "Oh..."

The brightness then returned to her eyes, and she said, quite clearly, and with focus of thought "The part seeks the whole, the whole calls to the part - they are one, and the same..."

"Yes, they are", said Ravani.

"And if that is so", responded Splinter, "then who am I...?"

"That", Ravani told her, "is what we're going to find out."

"So, what do you think all that was about?"

Sahan couldn't answer Defender Delpas’s question right away, but his words and Ravani's actions lingered in the spell-caster's mind, refusing to allow her to properly attend to other matters. Sahan had seen what Zone Gamma could do to her own magics, and even a truly skilled sorceress such as Ravani could only maintain a magical effect for a few seconds at best - but it wasn't that failure that had sent the Mystalornan running as though in fear for her life. There must be something else, Sahan told herself, and in the peace and quiet of her guest quarters, she set about finding out just what had driven Zone Gamma's guest away...

"Give me information on Mystalorn, and its people", she instructed the computer running the complex's data-network.

Sahan went through page after page of dry, clinical data, the planet's location, size, population, political affiliations - and found no enlightenment. I'm not sure its anything some... mundane, she came to think, as the screen started to show her scenes of the verdant surface of Ravani's homeworld, although there is a lot of open space - all those trees - but that wasn't just a fear of enclosed spaces. It was something... deeper.

"Access additional files", requested Sahan. "Is there anything else, apart from the official entry?"

"Affirmative", replied the computer. "Personal record submitted by Mistress Mane-of-Night..."

"Play it", ordered the Oris spell-caster. The thoughts of another native of Mystalorn could provide just the illumination that was needed...

It wasn't long before Sahan learned something surprising - she knew sixty or so percent of the land surface of Mystalorn was covered by forest, but what she hadn't, until she heard the report by Mane-of-Night, was that that forest was not made up of individual trees, but that each "tree" was but a single "flower" of one planet-girdling organism, a root-mass spanning from pole to pole, and coast to coast. "The precise origins of the Great Forest are a subject for much study and speculation", said Mane-of-Night's image, "but there is no disputing that Mystalorn's magic, permeating into all things on our world, living or otherwise, had played the greatest part in their development..."

Magic... permeating into all things - that was the answer. To Mystalornans, magic was not just a power source for tricks, but a fundamental part of what they were, and Ravani had experienced something close to what it might be like were Sahan to have the LifeLight drawn out of her.

"Horrible", the spell-caster murmured to herself. "Just... horrible..."

Sahan took a while to meditate on the matter, and perhaps find a way to prevent her magics from being interfered with again, but the necessary peace was proving elusive. She's started becoming afraid that Zone Gamma might, now that it had been deprived of a Mystalornan food-source, develop a taste for LifeLight, and any prickling sensation, any fleeting draught felt like a prelude to an attack...

Then a voice spoke her name - a voice she knew, but it still almost caused her heart to stop. "Miss Tasameed?", said Defender Delpas. "It's the other... guest - she wants to talk to you. She asked for you by name."

Sahan took a moment to regain some kind of composure, then she addressed the most pressing question that came to mind. "The other guest...?"

"I was only authorised to inform you if it became relevant", replied Delpas. "Clearly, we just achieved relevance."

"But-but who is our 'guest'?", asked Sahan.

"Two ways to know that", the Defender told her. "Talk to Grey Section - if you can get clearance - or go and find out for yourself. If you do the latter, remember this - if the guards snarl and bare their teeth at you, just do what they do... and do not blink..."

...to be continued...