Cosmic Soul: A MM Sci-fi Romance (Cosmic Romance 2), page 1
Cosmic Soul
Cosmic Romance 2
Mars Quinn
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024 Mars Quinn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without permission of the copyright owner except for the use of quotations in a book review. For more information, address: marsquinnauthor@gmail.com
NO AI TRAINING: Without in any way limiting Mars Quinn's exclusive rights under copyright, any use of this publication to “train” generative artificial intelligence (AI) technologies to generate text is expressly prohibited. Mars Quinn reserves all rights to license uses of this work for generative AI training and development of machine learning language models.
Editor: Sandra Darling
Cover Artist: Etheric Designs
ASIN: B0DCGCLJZL
ISBN: 978-1-961972-04-9 (Paperback)
Content Warnings
Several hard and potentially upsetting topics are discussed in this book, and people with triggers might want to read the following. But please be aware that these content warnings contain massive spoilers, so if you have no triggers, please feel free to continue. Please remember your mental health is more important than reading any book, so be gentle with yourself and skip this book if one of the following is upsetting to you.
Please note: I am human. I have tried to list everything I could think of, but I might have missed some. Feel free to DM or email me if you have a specific trigger you want to know if it is in this book or not.
Discussion of death
Death of a family member
Swearing
Depression
Suicidal ideation (there is no attempt)
Parental and domestic abuse (side character—none shown on the page)
Mentions of past bullying
Explicit sexual content (all consensual)
Spectrophilia
Light exhibition
Piercings
Spanking
Biting
Licking
Body dysmorphia
Sensory overstimulation
Chronic pain**
Ableism
Abliest culture
Light political unrest
**This is not a trigger warning, but the depictions can trigger some people. I wanted to be as careful as possible.
Happy reading!
Chapter 1
Back at the start again.
Being dead wasn’t so bad. Was it ideal? No, but honestly, it really wasn’t that bad. I’d medium recommend. Besides, everyone had to die at some point, so why complain? My death hadn’t been traumatic or anything. I fell down a staircase and cracked my head open. One second, I’d been laughing with my brother Matt; the next, I was standing over my body thinking, “Oh, shit.”
For whatever reason, my soul refused to move on, head into the light, or whatever. I didn’t have any reason to hang around, but hanging around was what I did. I’d haunted my family for a few years. They moved on. All good on that front. Then I’d figured since I didn’t explore when I was alive, why not do it now?
The Great Wall? Awesome. The White Cliffs of Dover? A must-see. The Great Pyramids? Not my favorite, but I’d enjoyed watching tourists basically melt from the heat.
Anyway, when I was in Australia, I’d spotted some weird shapes, which turned out to be aliens, of all things. They had toothpick bodies and massive watermelon heads with two conical horns. The little purple dudes wore the worst orange spandex I’d ever seen. Like the eighties had desperately wanted these guys back. They’d had Ghostbuster vacuums strapped to their backs with wide clear tubes that sucked up spiders. Spiders! Why would they want those? Who knows, but I’d figured why the hell not jump aboard?
After that was a whirlwind of space stations, ships, and planets.
Eventually, years later, I’d wandered to a space station hovering above the planet Tamkolvanloknol (what a name), home of the Drakcol Empire, where I heard about a plan to go to Earth. It was like a bolt of longing had struck me. I’d wanted to go home. Badly. I’d been desperate to see my family, my home, and my people. The places I knew. Maybe then I’d finally be able to move on.
It hadn’t really worked out that way.
Sure they’d gone to Earth, but they didn’t land or send a shuttle to the surface. They’d beamed up some dude named Seth Harris because he was Prince Kalvoxrencol’s soulmate. Trying to break through the atmosphere had seemed like a bad idea (just my luck, I would’ve gotten stuck orbiting Earth). When they headed back to the same planet I’d left, I’d gone with them. Now, I was on the Admiral Ven, which was docked at the same space station I’d been at a year ago.
Full circle with absolutely shit to show for it.
What to do? What to do? Jumping on another ship and wandering some more was always an option. Plenty of universe I hadn’t seen. A little frown dragged my lips down at the thought. I was… tired, emotionally, not physically, but still. That was why I’d tried to go home in the first place, but that went down the crapper.
I could hang around Seth for humanity’s sake and brotherhood and all that. Yeah, he didn’t know I existed, but I could make sure he was alright and that Kalvoxrencol was treating him well.
Though from what I’d glimpsed of their romance on the Admiral Ven, he worshiped Seth, and they were mates, maybe not officially—I wasn’t exactly sure how it worked. I mean they had a ceremony of sorts with a lighted glass and vows, but that was more of an engagement-like thing. Or had it been a wedding? Honestly, I wasn’t sure, but they were together. From what I’d seen, Seth was happy with the arrangement.
Still, he might need me.
Decided, I raced through the halls of the ship, not bothering to dodge the civilians and crew who were disembarking. I slid right through them, making a few people shiver. Amidst the pressing crowd, I spotted a familiar face, Wyn. His bubblegum-pink hair and lavender scales stuck out like a sore thumb.
“Hey, Buddy,” I said, falling in step with him. He kept staring at his tablet, grumbling about a phase variance. I was pretty proud of the fact I’d learned to speak Drakconese. I’d picked it up when I lived on the space station, then refined my skills on the year-long journey. There was occasionally a word or phrase I didn’t know, but mainly, I understood it all. It was one of the many languages I’d learned over the years.
I wiped an imaginary tear. God, Nana would be proud.
“So where are you going?” I asked him, stepping onto the space station.
I’d wandered the station pretty thoroughly when I was here last year, and it appeared the same. Shops, rooms, laboratories, command, and so much more. The main aliens aboard were drakcol, probably because it orbited their home planet. Some of the other aliens I knew the names of and some I didn’t, but they came in all shapes, sizes, and colors.
Wyn didn’t pay any attention to the lush plants growing everywhere or the unique items for sale. Instead, he bustled through the crowd and boarded a shuttle.
I recognized a few of the drakcol, all in uniforms, but my attention stayed on Wyn, not only because he was close friends with Seth, but because he’d followed me around the ship during the entire journey, even though he had no idea I existed.
Maybe he sensed me? I squashed that thought like a bug. He didn’t. No one did. I was alone, and it was fine.
The shuttle vibrated, not that I felt it, but people shifted with it. I, of course, didn’t move. Nothing touched me. Believe me, I’d tried. I was impervious or more accurately, non-existent. Occasionally, if I really focused, I could shift or bump something, but it exhausted me, sometimes to the point I vanished, like ceased to exist for a few hours, which was creepy, to say the least. Even when I did manage to touch something, I still didn’t perceive it. No texture. No temperature. No nothing. I was a void with no physical sensations whatsoever.
Wyn didn’t bother looking up from the tablet when the shuttle landed; instead, he kept tapping away at the glass, claws clicking. He was beautiful, and there wasn’t really any other way to phrase it. His hair was short on the sides and longer on top (most of the officers on board had the same hairstyle, probably a military thing). His scales were lavender with hints of gold and magenta skin around them, and they possessed a sheen like a snake. His ears were tapered like elves from the story books and had pink studs in the lobes and golden studs that trailed up to the tip. His heart-shaped face was delicate and his lips full.
He was so pretty that it was a shame I was dead. Oh well.
His long tail, tipped with a thatch of pink hair, thrashed; he was obviously upset. I had no idea what was bothering him, and I couldn’t ask. I mean, I could, but the dude wouldn’t hear me.
He left the shuttle, and I followed him. Wyn seemed to know where he was going because he didn’t hesitate in his step and headed across the fairly empty port to a massive building. The palace was a feat of glass and spires, twisting like dragon tails. It had terraces, balconies, windows with railless verandas, and plants everywhere. Drakcol flew around the palace; their wings spread wide, catching the air.
The sprawling city, just down a steep incline from the palace, was filled with towering glass buildings and lush parks. There wo
Without hesitation, Wyn stepped inside the palace and wound through the halls. Even more plants were inside. The drakcol definitely had a thing for plants from the amount of potted trees, flowers, ferns, and vines growing all over the place. Even the Admiral Ven had plants on almost every surface.
All of the outside walls of the palace had huge windows framed by sheer curtains fluttering in the near-constant breeze. Everything was pretty, airy, and luxurious from the shiny white marble-like floor to the stone walls.
What the palace didn’t have was the typical rich people's stuff from knickknacks, pottery, statues, paintings, and unnecessary furniture. You know, junk people collected for no other reason than it was valuable.
We came to an inner hallway that led to a set of stairs with an open channel wide enough for drakcol to fly up or down. Wyn ignored it and walked down the steps, claws clacking away on his screen and tail flicking. As he wound through more hallways, I mentally started to form a map.
Wyn palmed a panel near a door, and it slid open with a gust of air. Inside was a mess of screens on every wall and consoles and terminals crowded every available space. A few people, who were wearing similar uniforms to Wyn, called out greetings, which he acknowledged. He plopped down next to a cluttered console, staring at the screen.
“This doesn’t make any sense,” he said, fisting his hair. “How is it here? The phase variance is here. How? How?”
Yeah, I should’ve thought of that when he was stalking me across the whole damn ship like an obsessed hound dog. Sometimes my ghostly self messed with technology. Most people either didn’t notice or ignored any interference I caused, but Wyn hadn’t. Since I was here, it appeared I’d brought the same issues with me.
“Sorry, my Dude. That’s my bad.”
“NAID,” Wyn called.
A face that made me start appeared. An old human woman, though blue, with towering curls, wrinkles aplenty, and a jiggly jaw asked, “Yes?”
“Can you detect the phase variance?”
“Affirmative.”
I barely paid attention to either of them, reaching out. My fingers slid through the monitor. Edith Smith.
“Nana.” If it was possible for me to cry, I would’ve started bawling. I had no corresponding physical sensations to my emotions, like the backs of my eyes burning and shit. All of that had died with my body.
It was the same every time I’d seen her on the Admiral Ven. NAID was an artificial intelligence, or some of her had been. It was confusing, to be honest. When I’d been on the station over a year ago, NAID had been a bland, blue drakcol silhouette. But this NAID had been separated from the main hub and had gained sentience. She and Seth were close friends, and to make herself more friendly, she’d chosen a face—a face that happened to belong to my grandmother.
“Why is it here?” Wyn asked, his voice breaking.
“I don’t know, unless my coding is causing the error,” NAID offered.
“I don’t believe so,” Wyn said. “It was on the shuttle as well. I’ll have to send a report to my superior. Something is wrong.”
“Well, that’s my cue,” I said, heading to the door, though I paused at the last moment because of NAID. She wasn’t Nana. I knew it, but part of me wanted it to be her because I wanted Nana like I wanted to be able to breathe again.
Shaking it off, I hopped up the stairs.
Chapter 2
You can see me.
I whistled a jaunty tune and began exploring the palace while I kept an eye out for Seth. I couldn’t actually lend comfort, but I needed to make sure he was safe. He was the sole human around for who knew how many lightyears.
Bros before hoes and all that. Though, somehow I doubted Prince Kalvoxrencol, or Kal as Seth called him, would like to be referred to as a “ho.” God, the very thought of calling him that made me grin. Seth would blush; Kal would stare. I laughed, bouncing out of the palace.
All of the paths surrounding the palace wound in nonsensical curves through towering trees and random ferns. Plants came in as many colors as drakcol did. Bright red bark. Gold leaves. Blue vines. Neon orange flowers. It was an array of colors.
I paused, spotting Monqilcolnen or Monty (Seth really struggled with the long names, though they weren’t that hard). His silver-white hair hung around his broad frame and down to his tight ass. He was huge, like many drakcol, well into the six-foot range, probably near seven feet. His deep forest-green scales had a healthy sheen that glinted in the bright sunlight. He was Kal’s cousin, and they resembled each other with the same long noses, full lips, and strong jaws, though they had very different coloring.
“Hey, Monty, or Commander Monqilcolnen,” I said, voice deepening before I broke into a fit of laughter. “Whatcha doing? Anything fun? Please say yes. Or better yet, take me to Seth.”
He didn’t reply and his steps remained steady, but I didn’t allow that to deter me.
Seth had to be here. Somewhere. He’d left the Admiral Ven about a week ago. I hadn’t gone with him, because I missed the shuttle. I doubted Kal had taken him too far away so quickly. I would find him. I had all the time in the world after all.
Monty headed toward an airy cathedral-esque building that gave me the urge to cross myself or say a Hail Mary, not that I did. I was beyond all that, not that I was religious. Nana and my parents were. I’d been dragged to more masses in my short lifetime than I wanted to count.
The building was completely made of glass (drakcol must like light or something) and had a pointed spire in the front that was so tall it appeared to pierce the sky. Even from here, I caught sight of the many plants inside. Maybe it was a greenhouse? That would be fun. I’d always loved nature—being dead hadn’t changed that.
When Monty approached, the front wall split in two, forming doors that had been invisible moments ago. I jumped in front of Monty. “Do it again so I can yell ‘Open sesame.’”
He of course didn’t. Rude.
A drakcol in a white robe trimmed with gold approached. She was old, like dirt and pyramids old, and had jagged scales and wispy green hair. Her pink eyes were covered in a slight film, her steps were shaky, and her wings hung behind her, dragging on the moss-covered ground. I’d never seen a drakcol with their wings out randomly like that. They always kept them tucked away beneath their shirts, not that I’d tried to stare at naked people when they didn’t know I was there. I wasn’t a creeper. But occasionally, I would pop into a room, and boom, a naked person. I’d gotten used to it.
“Great Mother,” Monty said in a reverent voice as he tilted his head to the side to offer his throat. Drakcol did that to acknowledge dominance, like werewolves. Though no one had sprouted fur or howled at the moon. Yet.
“Wayward Child,” she replied, tail curling around his. “Finally ready to give up the stars?”
“No. My place is among them. Not here.”
She leveled him a look that would’ve had me cringing, but he didn’t back down. “You are the strongest spiritual soul ever tested, Monqilcolnen. You belong among the Ranks. Here.”
“I do not. I know this.”
The woman, or Great Mother, let him go and faced the massive floating crystal in the center of the room. Like really—how had I missed it? The crystal was over ten feet tall and put off a weird hum that made me twitch. It gave me capital letter vibes. Like it wasn’t some crystal. It was the Crystal.
“Have you secured our audience with Seth Harris?” she asked.
I perked up. What did she want with my dude?
“Kalvoxrencol will not allow anyone to see him besides family and Seth’s friends. He’s refusing an audience.”
A deep frown tugged on her non-existent lips. “Seth Harris has the purest warrior soul ever tested, and he is not drakcol. He can mind-speak with the prince. We need to speak with him.”
