To the ignorant eye, apathy seems no sin – yet this is not so. The anti-thesis to wrath, it is equally lethal, though in an entirely different way. An old adage says ‘evil triumphs when good people do nothing’. In succumbing to lethargy and apathy, you succumb to defeat. It is easy to drift peacefully down the river of life. It takes a far stronger creature to swim against the current. Be passionate in all that you do and stand up for your beliefs. Seize fate, lest it seizes you.

~ Tutor annals

***

All great trials must have a beginning. It seemed fitting the girl thought that hers would begin as such. As she turned over the cube she held in her hands, she cast her mind back to the lessons she had spent – endured, even – in the company of the man she knew as Tutor. Her eyes moved over the scar he had given her, the branding on the back of her had that signified her rite of passage. It was one of many now, some that were carried proudly, and others not so. Yet, if one thing could be said of them all, it was that she had earned them. Unlike many others, she would not stand by and watch life wane away. Every day was an opportunity. It was this ethic that had gifted her with an abnormal sense of experience and maturity for such a young age.

In addition to this, she had become resourceful. Inquisitive and inventive, Vega had a mind made for solving puzzles. It was this thirst for knowledge – and dislike of the unknown – that had prompted her to run a number of searches on the planet she was headed for. The co-ordinates had not been labelled by the Tutor, merely bundled into the data cube, yet he would have expected his pupil to research her destination rather than charging in without any prior awareness.

Ando Prime was it’s name, a frozen world with very little in the way of life on it. It was a wasteland. There was only one notable thing about the place, and so Vega could only assume that it was because of this that she was headed for Ando Prime. Tucked away in the Andobi mounts there was an ancient sect of monks. Pacifists by nature, they had settled their village hundreds perhaps thousands of years ago. Looking out of the central view port of her ship, at the advancing ice-white bulk of Ando Prime, the girl knew that it was to this village that she must travel.