Guardians - The Red Sun

Posted on Thu Sep 24th, 2026 @ 10:19pm by Captain Marie Batel & Patin

3,634 words; about a 18 minute read

Mission: Beholder
Location: Bajoran Space
Timeline: a LONG time ago

The red star glowed brightly against the Bajoran sky - a light that apparently wasn't supposed to be there at all, yet still it shone. The Architect had grumbled, grabbed his parchments and stormed back inside the tent, muttering something about sisters before disappearing.

The red sun beckoned - Marie and Patin moved to investigate it - a benefit of being non-corporeal in that they didn't need starships or transporters - just the will to investigate.

" So it's not supposed to be here..."Marie started as they moved beyond Bajor's atmosphere and into space - something that never got old.

Patin kept her eyes on the red light as they moved farther from Bajor, watching the strange glow against the darkness of space. “It's never been there, that I know of. Maybe it showed up in a fable at some point, but I was never much of a believer in fables.” She paused, her attention remaining fixed on the red aura. “Aside from the sister tale, I guess.”

She gave a small shrug. “And even that took me a while to digest.”

"Tell me what you remember about the fable" Marie encouraged as they neared the glow. It wasn't a red sun as Marie had thought, but something else, an angry red mark against the velvet backdrop of space. It screamed danger.

Patin studied the angry red glow ahead of them, her brow furrowing as she searched through memories she had spent most of her life ignoring. “I don't know much. Fa used to tell stories like that when I was little, but I never put much faith in them, or him for that matter. When the reality of war is something you live with every day, you don't have much use for tall tales about sisters appearing from the heavens.”

She drifted a little closer to the red aura, watching it writhe against the darkness. “I remember the little girl, though. She wanted a sister, kept asking for one, apparently. And somehow, one was given to her.” Patin frowned. “There was something about the sisters being together, I think. One was meant to watch over the other.”

She fell quiet for a moment, then shook her head. “There was more. Something happened to one of them.” Her eyes narrowed as the memory struggled to surface. “She fell, or was cast away. Something like that. I always thought that was the part Fa made up as a cautionary tale to get me to behave.”

Patin looked back toward Bajor, then at the red light again.  “Funny thing is, I don't remember the story ever saying how she fell.”

"Metaphorical fall? Or otherwise?" Marie got closer to the angry red space blob. It was some kind of space phenomenum, or was it one of these Wraith things, cast out of the Prophets and caught in some kind of space eddy. Or was it a Vezda in its previous form? She opened her mind to see if she could sense them like she had previously.

Patin gave a small shake of her head. “I don't know.” She watched the red aura ahead of them, her expression tightening as they drew closer. “I know pieces of Bajoran history. Enough to know where we've been and what my people have survived. I wasn't exactly sitting in a classroom studying ancient fables. Fa told stories and sometimes I listened. Then I grew up.”

She moved closer to the red glow, curiosity slowly overtaking the caution in her expression. “But that...” Patin studied it for several seconds. “That's not how I remember the sky.” The red aura seemed to pulse against the darkness, its edges shifting in a way that made them question whether they were looking at something solid or something that simply occupied space. “And if this is really what the old storys were talking about...” She drifted another few feet closer. “Maybe I should have listened to my Fa a little more.”

"We could ask the architect?" Marie suggested, not getting any Vezda feelings from the aura. The aura shine brightly, brilliant red against the dark backdrop, so brightly its relatively small size was vastly compensated by its brightness. Marie dared to go closer still, seeing it be another non-corporeal entity. "Ahhh....it's alive. What do your Wraiths look like when they aren't in Bajoran form?" She retreated quickly as the energy noticed her presence.

Patin's eyes remained fixed on the red aura. “Evil bastards. Shadows of light with an energy that blocks out all sense of reason. Or something like that.” She rubbed at her arm as a chill crept up her spine. “Nozzie told me once she'd experienced one in a vision. I've never seen one myself.”

Her eyes went glassy as an old memory surfaced. “That's... not entirely true.” She paused as she recalled “I had a vision once. I was warned they would take Patina after she was born. They were going to kill Noz and use Patina to darken the world. It was the choice I had to make, to sacrifice myself for my friend, or let it play out.”

She swallowed and looked back at the red aura. “It was dark, almost black, with flowing fiery edges, like a piece of burnt charcoal that was still glowing underneath.” Patin stared at the brilliant red presence for another moment. It didn't look like the same which should have been reassuring. Somehow, it wasn't.

She drifted closer again, curiosity getting the better of caution, and a crooked grin tugged at her mouth. “I say we poke it with a stick. A big fat boomstick.”

"Do you always blow up something you don't understand?" Marie quipped with a smirk, going as close as she dared to the red spectre. It flickered at her approach, seeming to acknowledge her presence.

"Who are you?" She asked it - not really expecting a response but asking all the same.

“Of course!” Patin's answer came with genuine excitement. “The best way to know what something is made of is to turn it inside out and see how it copes.” There was something almost alarming about how sincere she was.

As if her words carried more weight than they should, the red glow stirred. A thin tendril of crimson energy stretched from the larger mass and reached toward Patin. She watched it approach, curiosity replacing the grin as it came within a few feet of her. Then it recoiled.  Patin watched as the tendril snapped backward, the red light shuddering as though something had hurt it. She stared at the phenomenon, suddenly much more interested in observing than poking.

The entire mass shifted; instead of approaching them, the red presence moved several feet away, drifting toward Bajor. Patin slowly turned with it, her eyes following the brilliant crimson aura as it continued its journey. "Ooh, now I really want to see what this thing is made of." The maliciousness in her voice was evident.

"You can't learn by blowing things up," Marie scolded gently, going as close as she dared to the red aura. Her demeanour softened, as though talking to a frightened child.

Patin gave Marie a sideways look, her mouth pulling into a small, rebellious pout, her tongue darting out as a child would when giving the raspberry. She folded her arms and made a show of looking offended, as though being told not to blow things up had somehow deprived her of a perfectly reasonable scientific method. The expression lasted only a moment before the red presence caught her attention again.

"We're not here to hurt you - we just want to know who or what you are?"

The red aura shifted, taking on the red form of the spectre-like Prophets. What had been a shifting mass of crimson light gathered into something that almost resembled a figure, though Patin could not have said where its shape began or ended. Fiery wisps curled through it, brightening and fading like flames seen through smoke. The presence seemed to occupy the space around them rather than simply existing within it. She felt the weight of something ancient looking back.

“We are those which have been cast out.”

The words did not seem to come from a mouth. Instead, they resonated through space itself, carrying a depth that made Patin's earlier bravado feel suddenly very small.

“You look to the horizon and fear the dark. You tremble because, to you, time is a straight path, ending where your eyes can see.” The red light pulsed. “It is not.”

Patin's eyes narrowed as she listened.

“They are the beginning. We are the end. The Alpha. The Omega.” The presence seemed to swell, filling the darkness around them with crimson radiance. “Every star that dies returns its heart to the darkness. Every breath carries the echo of the first breath. You spend your brief existence fearing the end, when the end is but a gateway to a new beginning.”

Patin's expression had lost all luster as she peered from the red presence toward Bajor, then back again, trying to understand.

“Do not mourn the closing of a chapter. The hand that writes the final word holds the same ink that stains the first.” The red aura slowly turned toward Bajor. “The cycle turns.”

Patin now understood, or at least she was beginning to. The words left her mouth before she thought them, placing a label into the void. "Pah' Wraiths. That's what you are, isn't it?"

“We are those which have been cast out.” The figure repeated cryptically.

"Cast out, why?" Marie was curious, not alarmed by this new development. There was always more than met the eye when it came to Prophets and Gods and prophecies. "We ask, not to judge, but to understand"

The red figure remained suspended before them, its fiery edges curling and recoiling through the darkness. “Why?”

The word carried no anger. It carried something that seemed to make the space around them listen, something old.  “We would not remain silent.”

The red aura pulsed once. “We watched. We waited. The cries of those beneath beckoned, and the others... did nothing.”

A tendril of crimson light curled toward Bajor.

“They named it patience. They named it wisdom. They called it the way of things.”

The figure seemed to grow brighter, its fiery edges stretching into the darkness.  “We named it weakness. For to behold suffering and remain unmoved, we could not."

The red light flickered, and for an instant Patin thought she could see countless shapes moving within it, like flames trapped beneath a darkened surface. Her expression hardened slightly. “You tried to take the Temple. The stories all said you were the evil ones.”

“We sought to rouse them from sedation.” The answer came immediately. “They called it rebellion.” The red presence turned toward Marie and Patin. “It was necessity.”

A final deep pulse of crimson light rolled through the entity. “THEY named us evil. History remembers judgement of victors.” For a moment, the fiery figure seemed almost to bend toward the distant world. “The accused are left with silence.”

"You just wanted to help the Bajorans who were struggling, and you were cast out for your efforts. Such is, that history is always written by the victor, never the underdog," Marie lamented, and she began to understand. "Where do the Vezda Pagh come into it?"

“To be as the Prophets are, one must cast aside emotion. The Pah is the soul.” The red glow regarded Marie for a long moment, its fiery edges curling inward as though the ancient being were studying something it already knew. “But thou, Beholder, knowest this already.”

A tendril of crimson light extended toward her. “The Vezda were once of them. A part made whole. Now, they are cast away.” The tendril turned, pointing toward Patin. “She knows.”

Patin recoiled slightly. “Me? What do I know?”

Marie smirked "About the Vezda and the cast out souls" she turned, still floating next to the red aura but no longer afraid of it. She turned to Patin with a questioning look in her eyes. "Another fable? Prophecy? Bedtime story?" Even deep down, she knew that if the soul was cast aside, it had to go somewhere.

“All I know is Nozzie had a fight with the Prophets last year... or maybe yesterday. I can't keep track anymore.” Patin shrugged, glancing toward the red aura. “Anyway, she was demanding to know about the Vezda, same as you. Probably before you kicked the bucket.”

She paused, considering the ancient being before them. “Of course, they were their usual cryptic selves. Went on and on about casting out their negative emotions.” Patin frowned, trying to piece together memories that had never made much sense to begin with. “The way I figure it, they cast out the Vezda so they could become the Celestial Beings we call Prophets.”

Her eyes shifted toward the crimson figure. “And Ole' Red here is one of the Prophets who didn't like that idea. Or something.”

We are many. The being responded simply.

"Many souls, or many of the Prophets who didn't want to play ball?" Marie asked, feeling empathy for this creature. She felt this was their opportunity to finally find out the truth about what had happened all those years ago.

The red figure remained absolutely still for a moment. Then, it divided.

There was no flash, no explosion of light. Nothing dramatic like that. The single crimson form simply divided, becoming two, then four, then eight, each figure dividing again before the eye could follow the pattern. In moments, hundreds of red figures filled the darkness around Marie and Patin, and then hundreds more. A thousand shapes hung suspended in space, each one identical to the last, yet each somehow distinct.

They arranged themselves in a vast circle around the two women, the pattern repeating outward and inward upon itself, each figure mirrored by another, each smaller circle nested within the next. The shapes formed a living fractal of crimson light, an ancient geometry written across the darkness.

Patin slowly turned in a circle, staring at the countless figures surrounding them.

The voices came together. Not a thousand voices speaking at once, but one voice given a thousand forms. “We are many.” The figures pulsed as one. “We who are cast out.”

Another pulse moved through the circle, crimson light traveling from figure to figure until the entire pattern seemed to breathe. “The banished of Bajor.”

"Holy smokes, you were right about the many" Marie swore in a low voice - turning a slow circle to take in the vast number of beings. "Thank you for helping us understand" She paused for a moment, still unsettled by the vast number. "So if you were banished, what is your purpose now?" It was a loaded question and she knew it.

The thousand figures remained suspended around them, like fluid in motion, their crimson forms breathing with the same slow pulse.

“We remain... of Bajor.” The words passed through the circle as one voice, ancient and measured. “We behold those who dwell beneath. We watch. We guide.”

A faint ripple moved through the countless figures, passing from one to the next until the entire circle seemed to breathe. “We place the hand upon the path, and they walk it.”

Patin's eyes narrowed as she watched the figure and heard it's words with her usual skepticism.

The Wraiths continued. “We wait.” The crimson light deepened, every figure turning its gaze toward Bajor. “Until our hour.”

Patin's expression changed. The humor had gone from her face. “What do you mean? Sounds to me like a funny way of ‘helping’ Bajorans?”

"Sounds like they're waiting for the Prophets to do something, or not do something, before they make a move," Marie mused, looking at the beings again. "What did you mean by 'laying a hand on the path?' Are you giving the Bajorans visions?"

The crimson figures remained suspended around them, their countless forms moving with the slow rhythm of a living thing.

A single figure turned toward Marie. “The hand does not command the path.” The words seemed to settle into the darkness. “It guides.”

Another pulse moved through the circle. “A choice. A thought. A door opened where once there was none. A fruit of choice upon a tree in a garden.”

The figure's gaze returned toward Bajor. “They walk where choice demands. We merely illuminate the righteous path.”

"Hrmmmm" Marie frowned a little, trying to wrap her head around hlw this would exactly translate to everyday life on Bajor. "How do you do that? Guide.... illuminate as you call it? Do you put things into people's minds and make them think it's their idea?"

The countless crimson figures continued to hover around them, their slow movements passing through the circle like breath through a living body. Then, almost imperceptibly, the pattern began to tighten.

Patin looked around as the outermost figures moved inward.

The circle contracted. Then contracted again. The stars disappeared and suddenly Marie and Patin found they were enclosed within the Wraiths behind a wall of crimson light.

Patin's hand instinctively moved towards the inside of her jacket, though there was little comfort to be found in the familiar weight of explosives when there were hundreds upon hundreds of ancient beings wrapped around her.

The crimson figures continued to close around them until there was nothing left of the darkness of space. Fire manifest, surrounded the two women, curling above them, beneath them, between them. It carried no heat, yet Patin could feel something within it, something that seemed to press against memory itself.

Then the Wraiths spoke. “You ask how.”

The flames shifted and a Bajoran village appeared from nothing. Farmers worked beneath a harsh sun. A child sat beside an elderly woman, listening as she spoke of something beyond the stars. The image changed to show a different village, a different child, a different voice. A whisper in the darkness. “A word.”

The scene vanished. A man stood alone beside a fire, staring into the night. Something clearly seemed to occur to him, as if he had been provided the answer he sought. His expression changed, and he turned toward the road. The image shifted again. “A question.”

A woman opened a door, as a priest looked toward the heavens. A young Bajoran stopped halfway through a field and turned as though someone had called his name. Another image, another life, another choice. “A possibility.”

The visions arrived faster. Flashes of dreams. Whispers. Symbols carved into stone. A hand pointing toward a distant mountain. A figure waking suddenly into the darkness, eyes wide with an idea that had not been there before. “A whisper.”

A book being opened. Its pages were old, the writing ancient, the cover marked with symbols. Patin caught only fragments as the pages turned. Kosst Amojan The words seemed to burn against the darkness. “That's no ordinary bedtime story.”

The book vanished. Another image replaced it. A different book. Another dream. Another whispered thought. A Bajoran standing before a gathering of people, speaking with absolute certainty about something he had only dreamt the night before. “Movement.”

“We place the hand upon the path.” The images continued to change. “We light the way.” A road appeared from the darkness of a wooded thicket. A traveler appeared from the darkness and never looked down, just forward. He simply carried on walking.

The images accelerated. Hundreds of moments flashed through the crimson fire, too many for either woman to follow. A whispered idea becoming a decision. A decision becoming an action. An action becoming a story. A story becoming a belief. And a belief becoming history.

Then everything stopped and the flames receded. The countless figures withdrew from the two women and flowed together, merging one into another until the thousand became hundreds, the hundreds became dozens, and the dozens became one. A single crimson figure hovered before them once more.

The Wraiths had not answered Marie's question, they had demonstrated it through imagery.

Patin could see Bajor clearly beyond its form. They had moved closer, much closer. The planet filled more of the darkness beneath them, blue and green beneath the ancient sky. The Wraith regarded the world with a peaceful kind of silence.

Patin looked from Bajor to the red figure. “So that's what you call guidance?”

The Wraith did not answer immediately. When it did, its collective voice held a sombre tone. “The righteous path is seldom seen by those who walk it.”

Patin's expression tightened. There was something deeply unsettling about the certainty in those words.

The Wraith turned and moved toward Bajor. “We have waited.” The red aura pulsed. “We continue to wait.”

Far below them, somewhere upon the surface, something answered. A faint crimson glow appeared among the mountains.

Patin stared at the light, it was small at first. Then it brightened and her expression slowly changed. She knew those mountains or at least she knew what lay beneath them. The Fire Caves.

The Wraith's voice came once more, quieter now. “In exile. Our time will come.” The crimson light began to descend, toward Bajor, the mountains, and the fire.



TBC

 

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