The Mantis Continuum - Book Four - 34. Chapter 34 - Ilya, Part Two

“You don’t have to do this!” Dozi implored.

“Yes, I do,” Ilya replied. She took hold of Dozi’s hands.

“But why?” Tchama asked with tears welling in her eyes.

“I just need…” Ilya paused, took a deep breath, and she sighed. “Everything was my fault.”

Dozi furrowed her brow. “Lahari is conscious again.”

“I know,” Ilya said. “I visited her and her dads before coming here. I told them my plans.”

“And they didn’t try to convince you to stay?!” Dozi squawked.

“Of course they did,” Ilya replied gently.

“But why do you have to do this?” Tchama pleaded.

Ilya answered in a hollow voice. “Two people are dead because of me.”

“That wasn’t your fault,” Tchama retorted. She was starting to sob.

“It was,” Ilya replied. “I should never have interfered with Unadi; I should have just left him alone in his isolation. He’s dead, and he killed someone, and who knows who that was. I need to leave.”

“What does that mean?” Tchama managed to ask between her shuddering breaths. She reached out and brought her one hand to Ilya and Dozi’s hands. “You’re just going to fly off around the world someplace?”

Ilya did not answer.

“Where are you planning on going?”

“Telling you won’t make any difference,” Ilya replied. “There’s no way for anyone to follow me. I just wanted to let you both know that I won’t be back for a while.”

Dozi and Tchama did not know what to say.

“You can’t blame yourself,” Tchama pleaded.

“I do,” Ilya replied. “It’s my fault that things went so badly. I’m just… leaving.”

“So we don’t get to know where you’re going or when you’re coming back?” Dozi asked.

Ilya looked at the concrete pavement. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. She released their hands, stepped back, and lifted into the air. Ilya hovered above their heads for a moment and said, “I love you, Dozi, and I love you, Tchama,” and before they could reply, she commanded her powers to launch her into the cloudy skies and out of sight.

Tears streamed down Ilya’s cheeks as she flew. She did not fly north, south, east, or west; she flew straight up. In a matter of moments, Ilya was beyond the layer of clouds, and the bright moon shone above her. Like on the night she first came across Unadi and his dead spot in the forest, the night everything started going wrong, Ilya now climbed in the dark sky until she reached the very edge of space.

She paused her flight, testing that she was indeed protected by the powers from deep within her. Ilya did not know what was out there, but she pushed herself beyond the borders of the earth’s atmosphere, and she soared into space.

The vacuum of the void, the cosmic radiation all around her, the solitude, none of it seemed to have any effect on Ilya. She altered her angle in order to head toward the only other possible destination in the immediate vicinity. The moon looked only slightly larger than it normally did, even though she was so far above the earth’s surface, but as she flew, the moon did not seem to be getting much bigger.

Ilya reached into her powers and accessed depths in them that she had never experienced. She flew far faster than she could have imagined, racing through the emptiness at astonishing speeds and closing the gap with the moon growing larger and larger in front of her. There was no way for her to know how fast she was traveling, but less than an hour after breaking through the edge of the earth’s atmosphere, Ilya slowed her flight and came to a hover above the surface of the moon.

Her feet touched down, and she looked up at the enormous round of the earth. It filled the sky above her, and she sighed without a sound. Ilya realized she was not breathing air, and yet, she could feel the same movement in her lungs as when she was on the earth. She had decided not to bring any food with her, and she suspected that she would need to return in a few hours when she became hungry again.

Ilya took a seat on a large smooth boulder. She brought her head to her hands, and she was overwhelmed by her sorrow. Ilya mourned the death of Unadi, whom she had been trying to help. She felt guilty and responsible for the death of the unknown person Unadi had murdered. Ilya was relieved that Lahari had recovered, and yet she was ashamed of her decisions and all the misery they caused. Long moments she sat, and a single tear appeared on her cheek. It froze and fell to the moon’s surface as shards of ice.

After Ilya’s emotions were released, she again took a deep breath of nothing and let out another silent sigh. She did not understand her powers, did not know why they granted her resistance to the brutality of space, but she was grateful that they gave her a means to be so far away, and so alone.

Ilya rose from the rock, and she began to walk in a straight line with no destination in mind; she simply walked for the sake of walking. The gray wastes of the moon passed beneath her feet, one step after another, and her thoughts became a void. She thought of nothing.

Day and night on the moon are not like they are on the earth, and Ilya walked for hours and hours in the moon’s daylight. She could have flown the distance, and walking on the moon was strange with the low gravity, but her abilities were a defiance of that particular universal force. Hunger never did rear its ugly head, despite the fact that she spent 37 hours walking, without a single break.

Maybe I’m like Unadi in some way, she thought. On earth I needed to eat and sleep, but up here, I haven’t felt hungry or tired at all.

Eventually she reached the edge of the perpetual light, and Ilya came upon the dark side of the moon. It was as if her body, her very heart had wanted her to spend time with her feet on solid ground, because of what she was going to do next.

Ilya looked up at the earth again, but then she turned her gaze to the glowing orb of burning cosmic gas behind it, and Ilya activated her powers. She finally lifted off the moon’s surface, and she felt filled with new vibrant energies. Ilya began to fly through the vast expanse of the solar system toward the blazing inferno at its heart.

Again she told her powers to fly her faster, much faster, and she moved through the void of space at speeds that defied the laws of physics. Three hours later, she reached the vicinity of the sun. It no longer appeared the size of a small coin on the inky blackness of space. It had grown in size to a gargantuan raging brilliance of fusion before her; it filled her view. The radiance from the sun at that distance should have blinded Ilya, its cosmic energies should have eviscerated her, but she hovered in space near to the burning giant. The powers of the sun did not affect her, as if the sun were nothing more than an illusion to Ilya. It neither powered her nor damaged her.

Ilya sighed to herself again, turned her back on the sun, and she flew. She flew for the life that filled her as she used her powers, the joy and the freedom. She pushed them further, and they took her farther than she could have ever imagined.

With the sun shrinking behind her and only the cosmic emptiness ahead, Ilya flew✪