On Solaris, a planet eons old, stones from the crust of a meteor give inhuman powers to their symbiotic pairs. Good battles evil to survive.
Darkness consumed Ineal as the voices tore at his thoughts. The sole survivor of the planet Eon, he wanted to shut off his brain, to destroy his consciousness and be nothing. But the voices would not let him.
The stones, he thought, encased in this meteor hurtling through space. The stones destroyed us. I am the last. They take me for their own.
He did not know when the glowing stones first came to his planet. Men and women claimed the gems for their own, pressing them to their bodies and allowing the stones to become necessary symbiotes of the flesh. The symbiosis with the stones gave his people powers and abilities beyond their dreams. But the price, the price of the flesh was great, and an ultimate death of sacrifice and pain was given in return. Ineal was the last, and the only being of Eon who had not taken up the stones.
But you took me, he thought as they spoke with their unintelligible voices, whispering in a constant echo through his mind. When my planet died you came to me. You took my body to keep yourselves alive...