Chapter 2

While they might feel panicked as their bodies are filled with what they have no power to control, it’s currently healing every little thing that might be bruised or broken in their bodies. For right now, they aren’t even aging. Neron is incredible. And for a moment, I have to marvel over the fact that I am able to wield it. That something so powerful and so incredible listens to my will. For half a second, I understand why the Bahiri revere the Nero so much. For half a second, I feel god-like. But as I take in the moon before me, engulfed in such a massive amount of Neron, I am reminded that I am tiny. I am nothing. This could kill me, just as it could kill my father or Edan. I’m no one. I am nothing. “Quarter of a league,” Edan says, his tone louder, a little more nervous. “Systems are heating, but still stable. Holy slag…we really might be able to land on that moon.” “You were doubtful?” I ask, turning wild, panicking eyes his direction. He just shrugs, his eyes filled with wild uncertainty. “We’re fine,” my father says, firm and definitive. “If the systems say we’re fine, we’re fine.” But just then, an alarm sounds, and the view outside grows brilliant and white. I’m completely blinded. Our pace toward the surface of the moon picks up. “Their gravity is pulling us in,” Edan says with that new, unfamiliar panicky tone to his voice. I feel the surge of Neron double and then triple. The helm in my hands surges hot and wild. I feel it as Deliverance is engulfed in Neron. Valen stands at the viewport with his hands extended, his fingers curled and his knuckles white. I see the Neron outside pushing away, bending to his will. A tunnel opens up before us, growing longer and broader. Valen clears the way, tunneling a path for us straight to the surface of the moon. “We’ll be to the surface in twenty seconds,” Edan says, his tone rising higher and higher. “Entering the atmosphere in…now!” There’s a sucking pop sound, and we fall even faster toward the surface of the moon. I hear my father frantically entering commands. The ship shakes violently and the sound grows deafening, as if we’ve been caught in a massive windstorm. “Valen!” I yell out. The Neron around us shatters as he breaks through it with his tunnel. He grits out a deep growl and the Neron beneath his veins surges brilliant and blue. I swear there is nothing left of my hands. The skin is burned to ash. They’re just bones, being scorched to nothingness as the helm grows hotter and hotter and hotter. “Landing in five…four…” Edan counts down, sounding absolutely terrified. Frantically, Valen shatters the frozen Neron. Desperately my father wrestles to get control over the ship. “Three…two!” I squeeze my eyes closed. Mentally, I push out to all the Neron surrounding us. I find the surface of that moon. I scream as I scramble to find balance. “One!” There’s a deafening moment of silence as everything around us stabilizes. And then the slight groan of the ship’s landing gear as we drop our weight onto it. And then there are the sounds of decompression as we settle onto the surface of this foreign moon. The core of the ship cools, and all the heat in my hands disappears. I whip around, looking for my dad and Edan. “Everyone okay?” Edan looks ahead, his eyes frozen, his expression stuck in shock. But he nods his head just a little. “We…we did it,” my father says in little more than a whisper. “We…we landed on part of the Frozen Kingdom.” I allow myself just a little bit of a smile. For a second, I take that in. I’d never even heard of the Frozen Kingdom until about a solar ago, but the legend of it, the mythology of what it is, exceeds even Valen’s own mythos. We’re here. I look to Valen, and I feel the door between our minds open. What about here? He prods into my mind. Does this feel like home? I don’t know, I say, shaking my head, even though no one else heard Valen’s unspoken question. I…there’s something about the Neron here. It’s different. Like it knows my name. Maybe it does, Valen answers me. I don’t understand what that means. There’s so much about this galaxy that I doubt I’ll ever understand. It isn’t my right to. “I can’t get any kind of reading,” Edan says. He doesn’t know that he’s interrupting a telepathic conversation. “I have no idea what’s going to happen when we open that hatch.” We might all just instantly die. “I need to get out there,” I speak before I think. I go to stand next to Valen at the viewport. I see scorched earth around us, because Deliverance is so powerful. Beyond that, all I see is white, frozen Neron.