The Darkold — Minister Faust

Dragged into a virtual suicide mission to rescue the Numan princess Azir Schtagfayar Utto, upon whose fate depended millions of people, Thagó and Harq stormed the Diefenbunker in southern Alberta, liberated their target from her kidnappers, and then escaped into orbit, only to have Thagó's vessel destroyed by terrorist reinforcements.

After killing the attackers and then commandeering the doomed Soviet space station Mir, Harq, the Princess, Thagó, and Thagó's sullen Human assistant Saynkandake MarAset Shanadakhete made their way to a safehouse on Venus, known to Numans as planet Tluwitl, “the bordello of the solar system.” There, Thagó's team emancipated an enslaved, mysterious, traumatised, and dangerous Human boy named Ooropos Poldleol-nim Kikotijototitl, nicknamed Ti-Joto, before the Princess revealed her true nature and traumatised Harq, perhaps permanently.

Arriving on Qorodis, the political-economic centre of the System, Thagó enrolled Harq and Ti-Joto in the Suftem Assembly to train as Chronostics and ascend to what Thagó claimed was their fate: to be the ultimate Seers who would discover the means to destroy all evil, reshape all civilisation, and reveal the nature, origin, and destiny of the universe.

But not even the Chronostics foresaw the terrorist attack that turned the cosmopolis of Naayt into an inferno, nor the security sweep that put Humans by the tens of thousands, including Harq and Ti-Joto, into a secret “white hole” prison, where not even Thagó could find them, and simple survival is an open question….