From the mind of Qualia Reed comes the complete short story series The Shadows of Athelon. This is the story of a former assassin and royal bodyguard, Esmerelda-09B. After her world is destroyed in the war with the human race, Esmerelda sets out on a quest to locate the mythical Caliopa Door, the one thing that might reunite her with Kai-Althea, the love of her life, and the princess of Athelon, who died with their world. To reunite with her beloved, Esmerelda must travel across the universe, taking her thousands of years into the future.

When Esmerelda wakes up again, half a million years later, she is the mind of a sentient ship that is being used to fight another galactic civil war, in a time and place where even the memory of Athelon is lost to time. To live again, Esmerelda must find a way to connect herself to life in the new galactic society where nothing is the same as she remembers.