Little Red Dwarf

Short Story

A submission for Iron Age Media's Prompt: The Fiend

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Long ago, the demons of the red constellation raided the luscious lavender atmosphere of the Planet now underfoot. Every floating city, house, and world wonder was forced to ground themselves on the caustic surface of the continent Centurion, a land of volcanism and ash. Out of a bid for survival, the industrious ‘sky-citizens’ in addition to their adoption of air, made a pact with fire. Every structure that flirted with the dense clouds of Centurion grew exhaust and intake pipes made of obsidian and coal. Every pipe, whether it be connected to brand new internal refineries for black gold, the plumbing of a hapless civilian, or the mysterious rudiments of the “great computer” which gave all who lived in the clouds access to power via electricity were suffused into the ashen soil of Centurion’s surface.

Years passed, bombing runs from the horror of red star demons produced innocent cry after innocent cry, families were separated, artifacts vaunted the world over were destroyed, and certain continents sister to the volcanic wasteland of Centurion turned uninhabitable due to the provocation of roaming red dwarves. Living, mobile, and frightful stars would hover above entire continents, and burn them to a crisp with jets of coronal malice, but Centurion was different, largely immune to the hostile rays of these monsters. Centurion’s very nature feasted off of all types of energy, everything from electricity, to oil as though it beheld the texture of pancake batter, to combat this foe. Hours were spent transforming people as they slept sheltered in their homes from pacified children of air, to raving, bloodthirsty students of the game known as War, with their patron singularly being fire going forward.

Eventually, the marvel of both Centurion, and those who lived among its ashes without so much as coughing was introduced into this struggle for survival. It culminated with a great new land to call home: far beneath the planet’s surface grew a rich custodian unto-thyself ecosystem filled with brand new flora which fed off the volcanic environment above, echoes of both the lost continents and even the sky as it used to exist gleamed in the selfsame grandeur in the form of crystals, as well as an artificial yellow sun generated to nourish all by using what was harvested by fire and brimstone from the great computer, the marvel of Indigo, the previous more peaceful era.

This grand terror dome, which held all the secrets and power of worlds above and below, as well as stars beyond — including that red menace, which ripped carnivorously from the flesh of the Planet’s surface — ended up becoming the frontier that all of Centurion’s newfound striplings were looking for. The symbiotic relationship between the natural and the artificial produced a frighteningly powerful military force which came to dominate the stars, as well as alternate dimensions. Centurion became a term to describe not just a single strange continent on a helpless world painted by indigo skies, wallowing in the shadow of a red giant, but a whole Empire who knew when to sit at the table and intimidate their rivals with the threat of conquest, and when to outright dominate them, taking all of their holdings for their own.

“When oh when, crafty flesh of Centurion, can we call it quits, and cease the hurly-burly that is our battle among the sleeping ones?” said a red twinkle in the eye of the General who ruled Centurion’s military might with iron resolve, the twinkle, a fraction of a fraction of energy peeled from the surface of one of the many hostile red giant stars to serve as emissary. They believed the other stars of the sky to be nothing more than “sleeping” compatriots.

“Never, never. the General said with a scowl. “Your spite, your lies, they’ve already sealed your fate.” If not for his very consciousness, he would be frothing at the gums. His next words were replete with as much bitter venom as the last: “When defeat and regret reigns supreme over your infrared empire, at last, at last, your war will end.”

With an angered crash from between the General’s metal gauntlets, the little red emissary was reduced to a faint charcoal taint that would never return to the side of its masters.

The blaring sirens of vast underground power-plants sounded, and great empyrean vessels of threatening obsidian make-up and even more threatening speed leapt from the Planet’s underground blood vessels into the arms of outer space. This fleet, this collection of death which has been martialed by a tired and angry people, as well as their bloodthirsty sponsor, would visit each red light in its reach all throughout their galaxy, and drain them of their energy just as they drained the patience and comfort of their formerly indigo, now scarlet and scarred home world.

Cataclysmic clashes were often so enormous, that some ships accidentally slipped into alternate dimensions. In one such dimension, the majority of the Centurion battleship had been eroded so horribly by particles from the space between dimensions, that it had been dubbed by locals as a “balloon”, or even a “flying saucer”. The surviving crew members had made it home again after careful arrangements with local authorities on the blue planet. The collective ire of Centurion was toward anything with a red star, not blues, whites, or yellows. Yet.

Thousands of years after the regular lifespan of anyone ordinary living on Centurion’s Planet prior to that world’s subservience to the element of Fire, the General of this marvelous army still lived, albeit very old and haggard from years of blowing up — cutting down — or chewing into red giants and red dwarves.

“Tell them all, the youth of our kind, that we did battles with giants and dwarves, but both such beings were mighty, bigger than we, and thus exposed the weakness of our “Indigo” world.”

Centurions referred to the geological period before the worldwide adoption of fire for survival as “Indigo”, with everything succeeding it being Centurion proper. No longer the name of just a continent, but the Planet as well.

All that young Centurions expect to hear from elders like the General were your average war-stories. The elderly veteran recounts past memories, with glories and horrors often sharing the same bed. The General’s last words though were a warning.

“We killed the last red star demon. We know we did, but in that other dimension where one of our ships crashed on a blue world, we left behind an isotope that would soon awaken that innocent yellow star, turning it into a monster of a red like that which we spent centuries fighting, the ones that call themselves “Humans” in this world will have to fight them as well.” the General’s next words were even more foreboding.

“When that war begins, do not help them, pray do not help them. Their denizens are not as long lived as we, and the one who gave them access to fire, “Prometheus”, used to be a star from our space eons ago. Therefore they are degenerates who deserve to get devoured by their true masters.” The General completed, to a chorus of gasps.

“If the Humans are led to our dimension, laugh at them, and tell them to flee, for it will be that very action of crossing dimensions which will bring sentience to their blue stars.” the old veteran said.

“What do these “Humans” call our people in their world, General?” asked an idle spectator.

The General replied dryly, his expression one of twisted stress and yet also amusement. “They’ve called us Demons, They’ve called us Elves, They’ve spent years calling us anything inexplicable, distant, or remote. What stars they call Dwarves is a joke. A faint reminder of the real thing. The Dwarf stars of our dimension hunted, shouted at, and preyed upon its food like any other animal.”

The youth among the crowded audience hung onto the General’s words. They recalled what he said before about the blue stars waking up, and the stars of the Human dimension being ‘asleep’. “How do we defeat the blue demons?” Silence painted the room a dull grey as the General pondered the question. In this intermission, sprouting voices from the crowd echoed ideas.

“Wake up our yellow stars!”

“Shoot our blue fire at them!”

“Crush the blue demons!”

“Use the Humans as bait!”

“USE THE HUMANS AS BAIT!”

“WE HUNT THEM, CARVE THEIR SKIN, AND USE THEIR SKIN AS BAIT!”

Laughter and mayhem ensued as the crowd came around to a similar conclusion, before the General stamped his metal-clad foot into the flooring beneath him, silencing the crowd almost immediately.

“We will hunt the Humans and use them as bait -AFTER- we purge our skies of all yellow stars. It is our mandate to live surrounded by darkness with only the fire of our beloved Centurion to guide our path!”

The General’s prophecies, insofar as they could be considered such, only came about by way of technicality. Time in each dimension passed differently, and so while the era of Centurion’s jubilation after winning the war against the Red Demons came to an end, and their war against the Yellow stars began, Mankind had already succeeded in conquering their own solar system, eventually coming to control their own galaxy, and maximizing the use of the stars of that galaxy by using large spheres which absorbed energy.

The stars were not the monsters mankind needed to worry about.

Suddenly, from the bowels of Sagittarius A*, rippled the very same crusaders who had combated hooligan sentient red giants and red dwarves, now twisted, and malformed in a way that would’ve made their previous enemies seem civil, and their annihilation by those hostile infrareds far more preferable than their present fate. Instead of being righteously angry warriors who fought against hungering monster stars, they were now the ignominy of Centurion’s arrogance and folly. They hunted after stars for too long, wallowing in the bloodshed, and eventually turning on their own people, and now the darkness that filled their space was the very same that mutated them, for it spilled into their space from the space in between, like the molting of a snake revealing an entirely different beast, that void sunk into their hearts, defiling their spirits, and turning them into the same rabid animals that the red stars had been.

It is feared that their dimension was already doomed from the start, tainted by a tragic intelligent malady that had started with specifically red stars, before moving onto the innocent Indigo children who lived on clouds once upon a time.

The battle against that void of beasts, who have long since abandoned their glory was just beginning, for Mankind was a fish leaping forth to grab the worm that was their destiny, not the hook that the Centurions wished it to be.