Star Trek:
Movements of the Unseen Hand
by Charles Hackney
1.
Thornn was a demon. Thornn wasn't always its name; when it was created an angel, its name was Cemnael, which means "patient warrior" in the Divine tongue. Cemnael had enjoyed its post and its duties as an angel.
Before the rebellion.
Before Lucifer.
Lucifer had a way about it, a way of gradually turning a soul around in so subtle a way that the soul in question found itself thinking and acting in previously unimaginable ways without knowing that it had changed at all. When it was recruiting Cemnael for the uprising, it spoke of the duties and benefits of Cemnael's current position, and how good they were. Soon the discussion turned to the idea that it would be better for Cemnael, better for everyone, if it had a higher position and more benefits. It then became obvious that Adonai had perpetrated a great injustice by holding Cemnael back. Before it knew it, Cemnael had joined the forces opposing its beloved Creator.
Thus it was cast down.
Thus it became a demon.
As it mutated from the angelic to the demonic, Cemnael changed its name to fit its new, more vicious nature. They all did. Beings whose names once rang with music and whose faces shone with love and compassion now gazed out with eyes of pride and contempt and wore such names as Darkefire, Toad, Mindraper, and Knightmare. And Thornn.
As above, so below. Each being has its own place in the Plan, and each being who works to disrupt the Plan similarly specializes. Thornn was a talisman. It inhabited an inanimate object and created the illusion that it was an item of magical power. Thornn's specific object was a ring. It was quite lovely. Made of reddish gold, it was fashioned in Akkad several millennia ago by a Mesopotamian priestess. It had a simple geometric pattern etched in the gold, with a crystal in the center in the shape of an eye. The priestess had believed that she had forged a "spectral magnet" which would grant immense power and good fortune to whoever wore it. Unlike most such trinkets, this one worked, and worked well. That was Thornn's idea. By making the ring a prize worthy of a king, it insured that Humans would not only wear it, thus exposing themselves to its corrupting influence, they would covet it. They would kill for it. Thornn whispered dreams of power into the ear of the priestess' son, and the young man killed his own mother in cold blood. This not only gave Thornn a new soul to corrupt, it taught the young Sargon a lesson in ruthlessness. This ruthlessness would serve him well in his rise to power as one of the first conquerors in recorded history.
Although a powerful spirit, Thornn made it a policy to avoid any conflicts with the Heavenly Host. Being a spirit, Thornn was technically immortal, as were its angelic foes. Spirits could, however, be wounded, and the healing process could take quite some time. Thornn once saw what was left of a demon who tried to go toe-to-toe with Michael alone. It was seven centuries before the demon could even move, and another five hundred years before it could be considered anything like normal. It had screamed in abject agony for four solid centuries. The lesson: don't mess with the Archangel. The angels had it easier. If they were injured, their compatriots would carry them to the Throne after the battle, where Adonai would heal them as good as new. Demons, however, could not heal each other. Not even Satan had that kind of power. Satan's talents ran more toward destruction than healing. Demons therefore usually just left their fallen where they fell, and usually smirked and quipped something like "See you in a few decades," or "Deceiver, heal thyself." Thornn worked better from behind the scenes anyway, so it avoided any direct spiritual conflicts when it could.
For thousands of years, Thornn's ring passed from owner to owner, promising wealth, fame, power; especially power. Few if any of the ring's "owners" realized that it was the power that controlled them, not they who controlled the power. Only one came close to suspecting the true nature of the ring: an Indian Brahman believed that a wrathful spirit was trapped in the ring, waiting to devour the soul of whomever wore it for too long. That was a period of inactivity for Thornn, when the Brahman had the ring locked away, where it sat for many years.
Others, however, had no inkling of the spiritual significance of the ring. There was a martial artist in China, for example, who thought it nothing more than a lovely antique. That did not, however, prevent Thornn from exerting its subtle influence. It convinced him that he had developed his chi to the point of invincibility. Empowered by Thornn, he could shatter boulders with a single strike, kill with a touch. The purpose of such tactics? Pride, of course. When an English missionary came to China some years later and spoke to him of Christ, he refused to even listen; believing that he had already achieved in himself any salvation and enlightenment preached by the foreign weakling before him.
Thornn had been everywhere. Spain, Egypt, America when it was still called the "New World," Russia. Russia, where it turned a self-styled monk with delusions of grandeur into Rasputin, feared by high and low alike. It was Thornn who enabled Rasputin to heal the bleeding of the young prince Alexis, and that dark night when his enemies killed him, it was Thornn who imbued Rasputin with the hideous strength that allowed him to survive as long as he did. That last part was just Thornn having some fun. They poisoned him, and he did not die. They beat him to an unrecognizable pulp, and he did not die. They shot him, and he did not die. How Thornn had laughed as they dumped his still-struggling body into the Neva River, roaring with mirth at the terror held in the minds of the conspirators. They were so sure that the vile monk would rise from the waters like some vengeful goblin and kill them all. It was not until Rasputin had sank out of sight that Thornn removed its assistance, and Rasputin died at last.
After that was another period of inactivity for Thornn. Its ring was, after all, at the bottom of the Neva river with the monk's rotted, fish-eaten corpse. Remember, though, that its original name meant patience. And patient it was. Eventually it was found, and ended up in the collection of a prominent figure in American cinema during the early twenty-first century. She believed the ring to be her "lucky piece," and wore it when she wanted to be inspired. She certainly was. The movies she wrote and directed drew much acclaim from the "Hollywood elite" for their ability to "push the envelope," as they put it. She had the uncanny (if they only knew how uncanny) ability to sense just exactly how much violence the public could stomach, how much graphic sex they would tolerate, how much nigh-blasphemous profanity they could hear; and then to go one small step farther. And one more small step. And one more. It was great fun.
After her death (drug overdose; she died bitter and alone, lying in a pool of her own vomit), Thornn's ring went to a museum. That was, frankly, boring, but fortunately it only lasted a few decades due to the happenstance of a nuclear holocaust. Thornn's museum was partially destroyed, and an anonymous looter who found himself drawn to a beautiful ring quickly found himself the leader of his small band of survivors. The small band became a large band, and the anonymous man became a very powerful man. He amassed enough power to take his people through the years of struggle following the destruction, and established one of the first Martian colonies. His body was found in an open airlock on his ninety-third birthday. It was ruled an accident, but his great-grandson showed a dramatic rise in power immediately thereafter. This young man had (and enjoyed) a reputation for his enemies meeting with unfortunate accidents. Ironically, he also met with an unfortunate accident when his shuttle crashed on Vulcan. Thornn couldn't quite decide if the crashing of the shuttle was due to its "owner's" enemies, or if it was simply growing tired of corrupting only Humans.
T'Pesh was an archeologist. She found the ring not far from the crash site. Not knowing that a shuttle had crashed nearby, and since the ring was constructed of materials also found on Vulcan as well as on Earth, she assumed that it was a Vulcan artifact of unknown origin and immediately set to studying it. This was Thornn's first shot at a Vulcan, and what it had intended as a subtle temptation to wealth ended up simply driving her insane. The lessons learned here were to take a longer-term strategy into the relationship, and to pay more attention to the differences between Vulcans and Humans.
The next Vulcan was a princess. In that uniquely Vulcan acceptance of anachronism, outdated concepts like royalty were still honored, though they staunchly maintained that this was nothing more than a show of respect for those who had gone before. Thornn quickly learned, however, that this princess held a tiny spark of unadmitted pride when it came to her royal heritage. A sin unadmitted is so easy to exploit. Thornn fanned that spark into a flame, and when exposed to the gospel, it was by that time simply too late. Totally convinced of her superiority over the "herd," she dismissed out of hand the notion that she might need salvation, and that was that.
Her son was a close one. Upset by his mother's untimely death, Sybok turned his attention toward spiritual matters (much to his father Serak's disappointment); especially to the God whom his mother had spurned. He was so close to learning the Truth; and once converted, he would have made a very powerful voice for Jesus among his people. Thornn, however, sent him into the lunatic fringe and on a fool's errand to the center of the galaxy, where it knew a powerful and particularly malevolent entity languished.
Thornn "conveniently" arranged to be left behind on Nimbus III (no sense in going down with the ship), where it found its way into the possession of an avid young collector of interesting items named Palor Toff. Thornn considered Toff to be hardly worth the effort. He was already such a base and vulgar fool that there was little Thornn could do with him. He simply hadn't the brains or the nerve to handle any more than the bottom-feeding lifestyle he had, so Thornn made do with bloating his pride in his collection. A most disappointing project, especially after a spectacular coup that destroyed a potential Christian (and almost an entire starship, to boot) in so satisfying a manner; so Thornn "persuaded" Toff to trade it to another collector, a Zibalian named Kivas Fajo, for an antique Ferengi beetle-snuff humidor and a mint-condition copy of Action Comics #1. Fajo was a bit more to Thornn's liking. Here was a being who possessed a cavalier ruthlessness with which it could identify. Thornn's ring (being just over four thousand years old by this time and therefore quite rare) acquired a place of some prominence in Fajo's collection, and Thornn went to work on Fajo. Fajo became prone to mysterious headaches, which were inexplicably alleviated whenever Fajo was in contact with the ring. The more Fajo was in contact with it, the more cruel and ruthless he seemed to become, and Thornn suspected that this might be a person whom it could put to great use; something that would really stick in Adonai's craw, a living embodiment of Thornn's cosmic hatred.
