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It’s black with silver speckles all over, clinging to Ecliptor’s index finger by its minute teeth, making tiny squeaking noises that are meant to be fearsome, probably, someday.
“What is it?” she asks, fascinated. The lights overhead reflect off its skin as it writhes, as if it can make up for its utter harmlessness by putting its whole body into its attack.
Ecliptor doesn’t even blink. “He is a star salamander.”
“What’s he doing here?” She leans in closer, catching the salamander’s eye. He stops trying to take Ecliptor down and stares right back.
“He is like you,” says Ecliptor. “The Power Rangers, so-called agents of good, destroyed his home and family.”
She gazes right into his shining eyes, seeking the truth. She lost everything and everyone, too, though sometimes she swears she remembers it differently, the chaos that resulted in her being here now. Wasn’t it a calm, beautiful day when she was found? Maybe that’s why her planet was attacked. Maybe that’s what happened to the little salamander who is climbing back up Ecliptor’s hand and facing her fully.
“I thought of you when I found him,” says Ecliptor, his voice low and gentle. “So I brought him here for you, Princess.”
The salamander opens his mouth wide enough for her to see his purple tongue, and squeaks at her.
She falls in love with him at once. “You’re not alone anymore, little salamander.”
He squeaks again, and she smiles.
She names him Scrudley and never looks back, not sure and not caring where the name came from.
He’s warm, leaving a fuzzy, almost tingly feeling behind when she pets him, and he grows fast. The first time she saw him, he was no bigger than her hand. Only a week later, he is able to wrap around her neck with enough room for her to breathe comfortably, grasping the end of his own tail to stay put. She wears him like that all day the first time he does it, and when Ecliptor notices at breakfast, he stares at her a while after he’s set her bowl in front of her.
“He’s friendly,” she tells Ecliptor, half afraid he’ll take Scrudley away. As if he senses this, Scrudley hisses.
“I see.” Ecliptor’s gaze lingers a moment longer on Scrudley, and then he leaves and goes about his day as though nothing has changed.
She is fascinated by the different sounds he makes, clicks and squeaks, hisses and gravelly purrs. He seems to learn how to make more sounds as he grows, and she wonders if maybe, someday, she’ll understand what they mean.
Scrudley’s shelter, a glass tank with rocks, dirt, water, and all manner of things that Ecliptor claims are part of star salamanders’ natural habitat while on land, is in her room, but he prefers to curl up on her extra pillow when she sleeps. Whether or not he ever sleeps, she doesn’t know, but he is always there in the mornings, and when she wakes at night, shivering, from dreams of her old house burning down.
In those instances, she holds out her hand to him, and he scuttles over, twining himself up her forearm in his version of a hug. The steady heat of his skin soothes her, and his gaze seems to promise that he’ll always be there to chase away her nightmares.
In a year, Scrudley grows half as long as she is tall. He goes with her to training, and once she discovers he can breathe a sort of electric mist, she decides that he must train, too.
“Princess,” Ecliptor begins, patient. He sighs, takes a breath, and starts again. “Astronema, I can’t teach Scrudley how to wield a sword.”
“He doesn’t have to,” she protests. “He breathes lightning.” She stopped correcting him about her name a few months ago, when he told her that the Power Rangers tried to kill Karone, but they will come to fear Astronema. She likes that. No one will ever try to hurt her again.
“That is all well and good, but I’m not versed in the art of fighting with one’s breath.”
She huffs, folding her arms in front of her. “If he doesn’t get to train, then I won’t, either.”
“Astronema, you must—”
“I don’t ‘must’ anything!”
Beside her, Scrudley spits, either sensing her anger or lending his support.
Sighing, Ecliptor walks to them and crouches before her, ignoring how Scrudley hisses when he holds her sword up to her. “You know him better than I do,” he says, unperturbed by her pout. “I’ll need your help teaching him how to fight.”
She tries her hardest to stay angry, but she breaks into a smile before he is done speaking.
Giddy, bouncing, she takes her sword and stands how Ecliptor has taught her.
“No.”
“Astronema—”
“I won’t let you!”
She flings a ball of crackling, silvery, starry energy at Ecliptor, who bats it up into the roof. It bursts into nothing against the grey ceiling, leaving a charred dent in the otherwise smooth surface.
Tears spring to Astronema’s eyes. “You just want to take him away from me.”
“No, Princess,” Ecliptor tells her. “I have no intention of taking him for good, but he is much too big to stay in your room any longer.”
Scrudley is nearly six feet long, making a wide ring around her as she stands, defensive, her fists clenched, before Ecliptor. He lets out a click, clearly an attempt to intimidate, and though she hates the truth, Astronema must concede Ecliptor’s point. Not only is Scrudley too big, but he is changing, his skin glistening now with sparkling mist, his toes clicking lightly on the floor when he walks. He grows almost too hot now, though she is used to it, and the tingling in her hands when she touches him is beginning to turn into pain.
“I’ve prepared an entire chamber for him,” Ecliptor continues. “He will be cared for, and you may visit him whenever you wish.”
“But what about training?” she insists.
“You may have sessions with him in his quarters.”
Unclenching her fists, she glances down at Scrudley, whose eyes are violet galaxies she’s come to know as well as the maps she’s been studying since she got here. If he sees or senses the resignation in every bit of her, he does not seem upset, only blinking at her and tilting his head so she sees her reflection in his pupils.
“Okay,” she tells Ecliptor, “but I’m helping him move.”
“Of course,” Ecliptor says. “I would not abide otherwise.”
When Scrudley isn’t in his chamber one day, a year after he’s been moved there, she panics and searches for him in the room’s every nook and cranny. He’d be hard to miss in this space, since now he measures as long as her room from the base of his tail to the top of his neck, but she cannot find him. Toward the back of the chamber, she sees Ecliptor standing at the edge of what looks like a pit, staring into its depths.
“What did you do with him!” she demands. A vague memory surfaces, a soft voice telling her to be nice. But why should she be? What little she remembers of her life before Ecliptor is full of nice people, and what did that get them? Nothing. If she owed anyone kindness, it was them, and they’re all gone now. The time to be the sweet girl smiling in the picture in her locket has passed.
Ecliptor does not answer, only holds up a hand to silence her. When she is near the pit, which she sees now is a hole in the floor of the ship, he points down into it. She can see the endless, inky darkness of space and the glow of distant stars. The integrity of the ship must be sustained by magic, or maybe electricity, or some other form of energy she hasn’t learned about yet, because she knows that outer space means death to most life forms.
Her whole body tenses, her clenched fists trembling at her sides. “Where is Scrudley?” she asks, but Ecliptor merely nods down at the opening in the floor. Astronema considers catching him off guard and throwing him out, to see how he likes it, but the impulse passes when she sees a shimmering form slither past, obstructing the view of space for a second.
A smile breaks across her face.
“He asked to be let out,” says Ecliptor. “Well, in a manner of speaking.”
“He learned how to fly,” she states, her eyes wide with wonder. She has read in books that the mist of tiny, star-like lights that star salamanders produce is for defense against attackers and protection in the vacuum of space. This is what burns Astronema’s skin when she pets him, even if he does not feel threatened by her. Scrudley’s species is few in number, scattered across the universe, but they are in legends everywhere.
“Yes, his instincts are strong,” Ecliptor adds after Scrudley flies by again, on his back this time. “From now on, we’ll have to let him out from time to time.”
She chokes back an apology, instead only nodding as she sits by the hole to get a closer look outside. Whatever energy field is keeping the air inside the ship shines like a glittery window. She should say she’s sorry for yelling at him, for doubting the only person who has been with her since her old life was destroyed. Ecliptor has never asked for anything but her best efforts at her studies and training, accepting her moments of frailty with quiet dignity. If ever there is anything she must do, he tells her. If she has ever hurt him, he has said nothing. Maybe that’s a lesson in itself, one he has crafted to ensure she is honorable when she assumes her role as Princess of Darkness.
Scrudley passes by again, slowly, meeting her gaze as he continues to play.
“I’m sorry,” she says. Leaning back from the energy window in the floor, she looks up at Ecliptor. “I should’ve trusted that you wouldn’t hurt him.”
Ecliptor faces her. “You meant to protect him. Of course you were upset. I’d protect you with at least as much fervor.”
She holds his gaze until the warmth in her heart becomes too much to bear, and then she nods and peers into space.
Years go by. Astronema becomes stronger, selects her favorite weapons, and learns more difficult magic. She decides that she doesn’t even want to look like Karone anymore, so she crafts new spells to change her hair to unnatural colors. She trades her old uniforms in for clothes as black as space, with accents and layers like stars. From Scrudley, who grows ever bigger, she learns how to shoot lightning from her fingertips and how to frighten people and creatures alike with only a look.
“It’s time to go out, Scrudley,” she says. Scrudley turns his head to her, confirming her scent as she tugs on her gloves. Standing beside him, she pats his neck and savors the familiar tingling warmth that he exudes. The fabric of her full-body outfit took ages to get right, but now she gives all her clothes the same treatment, proofing them against star salamanders’ natural defenses so she can be with Scrudley whenever she likes. The older she gets, the less time she has to spend with him. Most of any given day is filled with advanced lessons in her best subjects, as well as special training sessions at the request of Dark Specter, her mysterious patron, who Ecliptor says she’ll get to meet very soon. Every second she gets with Scrudley needs to count.
Stories of star salamanders taking fierce warriors for rides through space are, apparently, based on fact. Astronema may not have been in a real battle yet, but Scrudley lets her ride him anyway, extending his starry mist far enough to keep her alive outside the ship. She wears nothing to cover her head, instead weaving a spell through Scrudley’s mist so she doesn’t burn or choke on it.
He makes a sound between a squeak and a roar, like most of his calls sound now, and she climbs atop him, settling at the base of his neck and steadying herself by tucking her heels against his fore legs. She matches his smooth gait as he heads for the exit in the floor, swaying from side to side in time with his steps. When he reaches the opening, he pauses, as if telling her to brace herself.
“Ready,” she tells him, leaning over to hold on tight.
He slides through the opening and out into space.
No matter how many times they do this, it’s always less dramatic than she imagines. In the absence of air, there is no wind to blow back her hair or the charm that hangs from her diadem. She sits tall and graceful like Ecliptor has taught her, only Scrudley’s rippling movements disturbing the serenity of her stance.
As they finish their first loop around the Dark Fortress, Astronema stares at the ship, the only home she really remembers anymore. So much is changing these days. From the things Ecliptor tells her, it sounds as if it belongs to her, and she’ll command forces from it, striking fear into the hearts of beings everywhere. Those who hear its name will tremble, and any who hear her name will cower, begging for mercy.
“What if I don’t want any of that?” she asks, patting Scrudley’s head. “What if all I want is to fly around with you all the time?”
Scrudley lets out a groan of a cry, which she takes as an offering of sympathy.
“Not that they don’t deserve it,” she goes on, her eyes narrowing as she remembers things she’s learned in her lessons. “Especially the Power Rangers. But still.” Shaking her head, she sighs. “It’s hard work, being evil.”
He purrs now, and she feels more than hears it. Then he rolls onto his back. With no gravity outside the spell she cast earlier, the only noticeable change is in her hair, which floats as if she’s underwater until both she and Scrudley settle into a steady forward motion again.
They make the next few rounds in silence, Astronema counting each one as they go. They begin their last one with a flourish, Scrudley doing a full roll to mark the occasion. When her hair settles, she catches sight of a line of small spacecrafts heading for the Dark Fortress’ cargo bay.
Beneath her, Scrudley growls, and the steady, gentle tingling of his electric field intensifies.
“Velocifighters,” she states, rubbing the back of his head. “That means Quantrons. They’re my foot soldiers.”
Scrudley hisses, dipping in his flight path and rising again swiftly.
“Show-off,” she tells him, snickering. “Of course they won’t replace you. I won’t let them. They will do exactly as I say.”
If he is appeased, he does nothing to indicate as much.
“All right. We have to get back now.”
With a low, rumbling growl, Scrudley veers back to the Dark Fortress, entering the way he left. Astronema leans against him for a full minute after she’s back on her feet, waiting for the raw power of his lightning mist to subside. Even through her clothes and gloves, the prickling energy hurts, but she endures, patient in ways she can’t be with anything or anyone else.
“Astronema,” Ecliptor calls from the door of the chamber.
Her hands on Scrudley, she turns to face him as he approaches. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
Ecliptor walks to her, nodding at Scrudley when he stops. “Dark Specter wishes to speak with you shortly.”
“In person?”
“Yes. We are nearing the Cimmerian Planet, where he is currently in residence.”
The prickling against her hands intensifies, and she winces. “Good. I’ll go with Scrudley.” She pats his neck, watching him take a slow, long blink.
“I must advise against that,” Ecliptor tells her. She shoots him a glare, but he halts any protests by lifting his hands as if in surrender. “This quadrant is frequented by poachers. They would kill anyone for a prize such as him, including you.”
“No one can hurt me,” she states. “Don’t they know who I am?”
“There are whispers throughout the galaxy that Dark Specter has chosen a successor, but as yet, your name is unknown.”
“Then what a perfect opportunity to begin my reign. I, Astronema, Princess of Darkness, go where I please on a creature of legend.”
“Princess, I cannot permit you to endanger yourself or Scrudley in such a manner.”
Drawing back from Scrudley, she walks towards Ecliptor, her gaze hard, her fists clenched. “Then escort us,” she says, her voice quiet but unyielding. “Surely everyone knows to fear you, don’t they?”
Ecliptor pauses a moment, taking a slow, deep breath. “I have already factored my being there into this hypothetical scenario.”
“Then we’ll bring Quantrons with us!” She is shaking as she whirls away, heading back to stand by Scrudley. Even without touching him, she feels the tingling of his mist and the heat he is producing. He will only become more upset as she grows angrier, and it’s that thought which quenches her rage. What sort of princess loses her temper so easily? No, she must be calm so that none may even begin to know the depths of her fury. Braving the threat of burns that last days, she places her hands on Scrudley’s nearest leg and breathes slowly, evenly.
After what feels like ages, Ecliptor speaks. “Very well, if that is truly what you wish.”
“It is,” she declares, though she is more full of doubt than she ever remembers.
The trip to the Cimmerian Planet’s surface is without incident, and her first meeting with Dark Specter is almost pleasant. His very presence is ominous, evoking a persistent unease that stays with her even after they have parted ways, but he is full of nothing but praise for her. She will remember for the rest of her life the moment he officially proclaimed her his successor, the future Grand Monarch of Evil, and somehow, she knows that all of his forces, scattered far and wide, are vividly aware that he has chosen her. They now owe her all the allegiance they owe him, and her name will be spoken with awe from now until the day she dies, far in the future, after a lifetime of power and dominance.
To think that this would not have happened if the Power Rangers had not destroyed her home all those years ago. She ought to thank them when she finally meets them, and smile at them as they perish before her.
“I told you we’d be fine,” she tells Ecliptor as she climbs onto Scrudley’s back for the return flight.
He lingers by his Velocifighter a moment, his eyes on the sky. “We aren’t safe yet, Princess.”
Time proves him right.
Only seconds after they’ve left the planet’s atmosphere, a group of small, unknown ships begins to take down Velocifighters. Ecliptor navigates away, attacking one with little trouble, and the other Quantrons follow suit.
Scrudley roars, his mist and heat flaring. Astronema only has a chance to fire one lightning bolt from her staff before she focuses her energy on cooling the points of contact between them.
“Head home!” she yells, but Scrudley charges the nearest enemy craft, whirling to strike it with his tail and heading swiftly to the next one. Another one fires at them, and he twists, avoiding the laser beam. She has only half a second to fire again, blasting the attacker out of the sky before the heat becomes unbearable once more.
Instinct keeps her from leaping off Scrudley’s back. She sees another Velocifighter burst to bits before Scrudley is off again, weaving through laser beams and fireballs in his haste to end this. The strongest ice spell she knows is barely enough to keep her from burning to a crisp, its effects disappearing in seconds if she even slightly shifts her focus. She should be fighting, though, not scrambling to survive.
A laser beam catches her hair, charring off the ends of a purple lock. As if he had taken the hit himself, Scrudley screeches, the sound deafening even though only he and Astronema can hear it.
To their left, another ship explodes, but she can’t tell whose side it’s on. Scrudley charges, mist crackling around him as he aims for an enemy that doesn’t back down.
The entire universe slows down then, and every detail of every moment stands out, engraving itself in Astronema’s memory. The poacher—the last of them, she finds out later—fires directly at them, and Scrudley keeps charging. Astronema feels fire dig deep into her skin, searing away the layers one by one as she draws the breath she needs to shout. Then, from behind her, a streak of lightning rushes past, cutting the poacher’s attack off before it gains more power, and a strong, familiar hand grabs her arm and yanks her off Scrudley’s back.
As a bone-chilling cold attaches itself to her, the flow of time returns to normal, and Scrudley twists half of himself out of the way of the blast.
She is certain that, even though her air spell is limited to a few inches around her, everyone in the quadrant can hear her scream.
“I’m so sorry.”
Astronema rubs more salve into Scrudley’s skin, terrified by how muted his warmth is. With her skin as badly burnt as it is, she shouldn’t even be able to stand in the same room as him, yet here she is. She wants to feel pain, to have to run away, because that will mean he is getting better. The gauzy, full-body gown she’s been given has not been treated. She will notice the slightest change as soon as it occurs.
The tears that tumble down her cheeks burn more than his skin does.
Ecliptor comes up to her, setting another bowl of gooey, smelly medicine by her feet.
For a moment, she says nothing as she scoops salve out of the bowl with her hands. She catches her reflection in the fluid, faded and blurred in the concoction’s dull yellow hue.
“I should’ve listened to you,” she says. “I almost got all of us killed.”
“That does not matter now.” He bends down, dipping his hand in the bowl. “We have survived. Now you know better.”
She nods, stares at the medicine in her hands a second longer, then goes back to tending Scrudley’s wounds.
Next to her, Ecliptor rises and applies salve to Astronema’s cheeks, brushing away her tears as he does so.
From that moment on, she keeps Scrudley inside.
Even he seems adverse to outer space now. On the rare occasions Astronema has the time to take him outside the ship, he circles the exit in his quarters several times before slipping through it, and he makes only two or three circles around the Dark Fortress before heading back with no urging from his human.
By the time Dark Specter has captured Zordon of Eltar, it has been months since Scrudley has been out for a flight, and he seems perfectly content with the few hours a month Astronema can go to him and the playmates she gives him to pass the time. Most of them don’t last very long.
Elgar, at least, is durable. Whatever Dark Specter’s reasons may have been for assigning him to the Dark Fortress, Astronema has found a better use for him.
Nearly a year of battles, deceptions, and betrayals later, she doesn’t know who she is anymore. Astronema was created from lies, and the children in her locket have been alive this entire time, seeking each other even as she tried to tell herself that girl had died long ago.
All her personal victories are taken from her by the same being who brought Karone to Ecliptor for safekeeping. The last thing she remembers, after a week of reconstructing her life as Karone with the help of the brother who has loved her through everything and the people who so readily forgave her attempts to annihilate them, is looking into Ecliptor’s eyes and seeing not her trusted mentor’s noble gaze, but evil itself reaching out to drag her back into its depths.
In the shadow of the Dark Fortress, surrounded by rubble and smoldering ruins, she hears the highlights of the last few months’ events. Despite all the awful things she did under the power of Darkonda’s cybernetics, she is proud of the plan she crafted to take out Dark Specter, because it seems as though, in the end, she did everyone a favor. Two villains for the efforts against one, she managed to eliminate. Who else can say they’ve done the same?
But all is not well. Zordon’s death took out all the rest, and according to Andros, Ecliptor was the first to fall.
“I’m sorry, Karone,” Andros tells her as they stand in her old, wrecked throne room.
She kneels beside the pile of sand that was the only being she trusted for so long. “He didn’t deserve this,” she says, her tears falling onto the thin grains. “He didn’t deserve this.”
Andros kneels next to her and holds her as she cries.
Scrudley’s chamber is in shambles, and the star salamander is covered in dust and debris from head to tail.
But he is breathing, and his skin is hot.
“Hold on, Scrudley,” she tells him, smiling when he opens an eye to look at her, laughing when her hands begin to burn. “We’re going outside.”
She asks to be left alone with him that night. The Rangers have no trouble keeping back a city overflowing with gratitude and obsessed with the solved mystery of their mysterious protectors.
They fly to the quarry, far from prying eyes. She touches her forehead to the tip of his snout, and he purrs, nuzzling her.
“If you come with me to KO-35, you’ll be safe,” she tells him. “Stay here until we’re ready to go back, and you can follow us there. There’s water and shelter and food for you here, Andros said.”
He snaps his mouth shut and gives a soft click, dipping his head slightly.
She sighs, smiling. “I would stay with you if I could, but I have to go back. I need food and shelter, too. But I’ll come here every day.”
“I will make sure he is safe,” says a familiar voice. She whirls around to face him, and he finishes, gentle and sincere, “Princess.”
“Ecliptor.” She shakes her head. He is standing there before her, glowing softly. “But you—”
“That final blast destroyed the evil in us,” Ecliptor states. “I was created to be evil. It was encoded in my body. But my consciousness was solely mine to shape. It, too, would have been wiped out, if not for you.” When Scrudley snorts, he adds, “And you as well, of course.”
As tears fill her eyes, she goes to him. She wants to hug him, but she knows she can’t. Still, she reaches out with one hand, and he takes it in the soft glow of his.
“I will stay with Scrudley,” he tells her, “and I will always be near you, should you ever need me, my dear Princess.”
She shakes her head. “I’m just Karone now. This is who I want to be.”
Ecliptor nods deeply. “Very well, Karone.”
Tears slide down her cheeks. She has never known a greater happiness than this.
At the tail end of the trip to KO-35, she reclaims her old clothes and one of her old spells and takes Scrudley out to fly. Andros follows a good distance behind on a glider, ready to get her when she and Scrudley part ways, he for a suitable moon, she for the surface of the world where she was born.
Scrudley growls and purrs happily, sensing her joy and the safety of their new home. He rolls and whirls and bounds up and down, drawing invisible patterns in the emptiness around them. She laughs, patting and rubbing his head, certain this is but the first of many flights they’ll take around the planet. Beside them, following along with fluid elegance, Ecliptor keeps his promise to watch over them.
With them at her side, Karone picks up the pieces and begins to build a brighter future.