Book of xeid

New Helmet - The mutant was weak and alone. It occupied a shallow depression in the terrain—a creature that had clearly been surviving rather than living. It did not advance when Xeid appeared. It simply held its position, its eyes tracking him. It seemed scared. It only lunged at the gray sentry when he stepped too close—a brief, panicked burst of movement, defensive rather than predatory. Xeid killed it quickly. The motion was efficient and final. He straightened. Something tightened in his expression. He turned and walked back toward the jet. He was nearly at the ramp when he stopped. A ship. At distance. Black hull. Imperial markings. His expression changed. The compression of the frustrated return dissolved, replaced by something else entirely—something that moved through his face from the inside out, arriving slowly. His jaw settled. His eyes found a different quality—the red of them cooling without dimming. Something that had been waiting a long time to surface. He boarded the jet. His hands moved across the controls with deliberate calm, steering toward the Imperial vessel without hurry. Below, a city spread across the terrain. The streets between buildings were narrow and irregular, and in those streets, the population had been driven into the open. They knelt in rows beneath a burning sun—men, women, figures of varying ages, their bodies bent into the posture of enforced submission. Imperial soldiers moved among the rows with practiced efficiency, their grotesque helmets reducing each face to the same blank, identical authority. Xeid descended. He understood their shouts now. The soldiers were preparing to punish them for failing to pay the imposed tax. A tax that had been doubled, then tripled, until paying it had become impossible. The same uniforms. The same grotesque helmets. The same design that had held his head when they had made him watch. There were only twenty of them. It took minutes. The last soldier lay on his back in the street's dust, the sun pressing down on him. The helmet had been removed—it lay to one side—and without it, the face beneath was simply a face: young, pale with shock and dust. Xeid's boot rested on his chest. "Please. I have children to raise." Xeid looked down at him. His eyes held their steady burn. His face was very still. "Children raised by you will be no better than you." The soldier's mouth opened again. Xeid did not wait. His weight shifted forward—a slow, deliberate transfer of force, pressing down through the chest plate. Until he felt ground. The bodies lay scattered when Redstone arrived. The portal opened at the street's far end and the stone giant emerged. His red eyes moved across the carnage. What settled into his expression was not rage, and not grief. It was something heavier and more tired than either. "Stop." Xeid stopped. He stood in the street with his hands at his sides, the blood on them catching the afternoon light. He did not turn immediately. His eyes moved briefly across the scene before him before he turned to face Redstone fully. He did not argue. Did not justify. He held Redstone's gaze with eyes that were open and steady and showed no regret. He turned and walked toward the portal without another word. He had almost reached it when S.U.N.'s sphere materialized before him—its golden light filling the portal approach. The tone, when it came, was gentler than he had expected. "The Mind wishes to see you." He entered the vast circular chamber. The golden hologram materialized at height—translucent, immense. Xeid stopped beneath it. He tilted his head upward. "I must warn you that if you do something like this again, I will be forced to strip you of your powers and you will leave this place forever." Xeid's eyes held the hologram. His chin lifted slightly. "Why did you choose me? So I could be a trained slave? Just like on that moon?" The hologram drifted closer. Its golden light intensified. "You were broken. Filled with pain. I wanted to give you a purpose—one that would be shared between us." The corner of Xeid's mouth moved. "Gods are incapable of empathy. And they can never share a purpose with me." For the first time, something shifted in the hologram. "I am not a god, Xeid. Once, I was a humanoid like you." Xeid's face changed. The smile dissolved. The cold calculation faded. Something fragile surfaced in his face—the expression of a person who has been carrying a very specific hunger for a very long time and has just heard the word that describes what it is. He stepped forward. His hands fell open. His eyes moved across the hologram with searching, desperate attention. "Then you must know what it's like when a predator comes for you. Takes everything. Destroys you." His face hardened again. The protective shell reassembled quickly. His eyes narrowed. His chin lifted. "Or were you the predator? Did you torture others?" "No, Xeid. I was incapable of harming my own kind. Evolution took that possibility from us." Xeid went still. His hands simply stopped. The tension released in a single, quiet moment. He stepped closer. "How? Why couldn't you?" The answer came simple and complete. "We felt each other's pain." Xeid stepped back. His gaze descended from the hologram to the floor. His eyes moved back and forth—a mind working at full capacity, calculating forward into the distances that the answer opened. Then he raised his eyes. The anger was gone. The mockery was gone. What remained in his face was simpler and more difficult—a gentleness, unguarded and real. "Thank you." A pause. "I accept your warning. I will not cross the line again." He turned and walked toward the exit. The golden light followed him to the threshold and stopped there. The Mind watched him go. It knew he was lying. It had always known. But it let him leave anyway—because some lies are necessary, and some truths arrive too late to change anything. He returned to his quarters. He sat down at the table and reached beneath it, drawing out the case he kept there. He opened it, and the components inside caught the room's light. He began. His hands moved with practiced efficiency—selecting, connecting, testing, adjusting. The room's ambient noise receded. Slowly, piece by piece, the familiar form took shape. The helmet. Changed from what it had been on the moon—elegant rather than crude. But its purpose remained the same. The light changed. Golden illumination flooded the workspace—S.U.N.'s sphere materializing in the room's center. Xeid did not flinch. His hands continued their movement for exactly one more second before they paused. "A helmet." The sphere's color shifted. "What does the helmet do?" His hands resumed their work. He offered nothing to the silence the question had made. The sphere waited. "Nothing. Not yet." Then his hands slowed and stopped. He set the helmet to one side—carefully, with both hands. He straightened in his chair. He turned to face the sphere fully. "It's my hobby. During all that time on the moon, working on it brought me peace. If even this is not permitted, I will stop." The sphere's color shifted again—softening, brightening back toward its familiar warmth. "You may continue." The sphere vanished. Xeid remained still for a moment. Then he turned back to the table. His hands found the helmet again, and the work resumed unhurried, patient, moving toward the shape of something that was not yet finished.