Around my feet, wisps of smoke curled up into the twilight. Its color resembled that of all the blood-tinged water, running from my cell block when guards threw buckets across the ground to clean up the mess from my meals. They’d always spoken quietly to each other, too quietly to hear from my seat on the chair. I couldn’t ever read their lips or see their faces either, always hidden behind masks allowing them to breathe against the poison I gave off.
But at this moment I knew the cell block would never wall me in again. I was free, but why? What had happened here?
Hungry.
My thoughts shrunk from critical to primal, and I narrowed my attention on the path the guard had taken into the shimmering forest. I would think further on the situation after a meal.
*
Determining my prey’s route after he’d ventured into the tree-line was no easy feat. It’d been long enough that sensing him was all but impossible, save for crumbs here and there, sending tingles across my skin and tremors in my limbs—a high that my body needed every few days, or else I would die.
He’d been terrified in certain places along his path; the terror had left effluvium pockets potent enough to stabilize my course. I wondered what could frighten him so. It was quiet here. Peaceful. The air was cleaner, and I no longer felt voidal; my chest so concave that no matter how deep a breath I took, it wouldn’t inflate.
And then a wall of his effluvia hit me so hard that I cried out in delight, stopping dead in my tracks by his panic and loss as it splashed sweetly across my tongue. There was nothing particularly scary here—more crystal-leaf trees, although sparser than before. It then struck me—;
His thoughts.
The shadow of a four-legged creature, whose back rose to the height of me, sauntered across the path. The image left as quickly as it came, erupting into black smoke, a strange screech echoing and dissipating with it. He had seen that. Right here.
Did it get him? Was he already dead? My instincts told me no—that there would be pieces of him left. No beast ever cleaned its plate.
Except for me.
My uncertainty was laid to rest when I felt him once again past the thinning trees. I lost his trail at a vast clearing—an entire field of glittery grass that crunched beneath my feet. Crystal particles were suspended in the air, released as my heels obliterated the grass. The permanent ambient noise suddenly grew louder; a choral monotone sung by thousands of otherworldly voices. The shift in cadence was like an allusion to something intangible. It made the hunger temporarily wane, my senses prickling with caution as I extended feelers outward.
And then it started to rain. How odd.
It felt warm. Innocuous, at least.
It had rained during one of the two times I’d seen the outside facility, and I specifically remembered the dark, churning clouds in the sky. There were no clouds now. It was as if the rain fell directly from the stars overhead. As they pattered to the ground, a series of chimal tones echoed around the clearing, interweaving with the ambient voices to create a symphony of apprehension. Albeit thankful for it, I was beginning to sympathize with my prey’s fear. I crossed the clearing, breathing deeply, exhaling slowly. I never felt the guard again after that, but there was something else now—;
Smoke.
Another type of visceral fear, but not from whom I was tracking. It was stronger, yet not nearly as sweet. And then I realized it wasn’t fear, but worry. The type that sat on your shoulders, getting fatter by the day, until it threatened to buckle your legs and permanently bring you to your knees.
I followed the smoke and anxiety, now anxious myself over what I might find. Never had I worked so hard to eat. It was thrilling and cumbersome at the same time, as without the scent of the guard, a meal at the end of this was not guaranteed.
It wasn’t long before I came across a smaller clearing, this one obviously man-made; dug-out to provide space for a tumbledown wooden shack with most of its walls missing. There was a fire beneath the bowed roof, smoke billowing out into the open air. A large metal pot was suspended above it by a rack, its contents bubbling over. Curiously, the shack was unoccupied.
Or was it? The sense of worry had peaked here.
I walked around the backside, pausing at the sight of a crowd gathered near the wall. My pause extended when I realized they weren’t people, but effigies. Behind them lay a structure that looked like a frame for a giant door, but it wasn’t connected to anything. Here was the first time in my situation where I felt my existence was threatened. I wasn’t certain why, they were just statues; but the atmosphere seemed to shift the longer I stared at them, from mysterious to sinister.
Whoever put them here hadn’t seemed to take much care to the aesthetic of their arrangement. Three of them were huddled together, another lay scattered in pieces, while a fifth was placed further away, as if purposely removed from the rest. Its posture was sculpted in a way that suggested they were about to tuck and run. One of its arms was missing at the shoulder. As I got closer, I began to recognize the contours in the strange sparkling stone of its torso. It was a guard uniform.
Wait, the statue looked just like—
And then it blinked.
I stepped back, warning tingles running down my arms. My meal was turned to stone, alive but not. In the ensuing moments where I myself stood statuesque in confusion and awe, he blinked three more times. Then, he closed his eyes for good.
I caught movement in the corner of my eye, breaking my trance and making me reflexively turn my head. There was something stuck to the outer wall of the shack, the adhesive a shiny coating of stringy mucus. No, not something. Someone.
They were pitiful-looking, clearly emaciated even with the muck covering most of their body. I would have thought they were long dead if not for the sudden twitching of their head, as if they knew I’d seen them. Their face was grayish-white, skin sallow and wilted from their cheeks. A black, congealing substance ran down the wall beneath them, a substantial puddle having already pooled across the ground, thinned by the rain. The subjugated thing croaked and shuddered, black fluid leaking from their parted lips.
I had no idea what I was looking at, or what any of it meant. The feelings of worry and despair that had led me to this place intensified the longer I stared. I’d found the source, although now I was upset because they were inedible. It was like staring at a chunk of rancid meat. I was bordering starvation, but not far enough gone to dare a bite of that.
Sensing nothing else, I turned away from the disturbing scene, already plotting my next course. And that was when I saw the child standing near the suspended metal pot at the shack’s opening. The moment we locked eyes, we both knew.
We were the same, but not. The disappointment was mutual. This little boy with TriColony clothes and a sweet, smiling face was actually another predator. The youthful smile fell, eyes drifting over the effluvia wafting from my form, realizing this was not a hunt but a potential turf war.
“What are you?” he asked, without expression.
“Just a wraith, looking for a meal.” I glanced at the statues and writhing creature. “Is this your doing?”
The boy said nothing, sizing me up. He was not really a boy, as any boy would’ve feared the sight of me. I felt nothing from him—nothing but that signature vibration letting me know we were of slightly the same ilk. Facility borne, facility raised, facility scarred.
“This is my post,” he said then, puffing up in an attempt to intimidate me. “Go away or my pet will eat you.”
“Your pet,” I repeated, looking around. “And where is it?”
“It’ll come if I call.”
“So call it.” Maybe it’d prove edible. Insentient fear was always an insubstantial meal, as the emotions of beasts were neither strong nor various enough to bolster the nutrition I needed. The facility had tried that with me at first, battling their ethics surely. I went on hunger strike until they eventually sold their souls for higher knowledge.
But hey, beggars couldn�
�t be choosers. If it got me to a better meal, then so be it.
The boy’s confidence deflated, and for the first time during our encounter I felt something stir from him. Fear.
Ah, so he was partly a boy after all. But his fear was weak, as if a barrier muffled it. I decided that I wouldn’t wait for him to call his pet, he would taste better than a beast anyway.
He raised a hand and the geodic grass around him fractured and turned to dust, billowing around us so that I could no longer see. Pieces of the broken statue flew toward my back, the only indication of their approach was a chorus of whistles.
They were turned to powder just before they reached me, coming into contact instead with the spikes from my spine, released upon the sudden threat. I then waved my hands, my effluvia pushing away all the glitter that bawdry child had used to blind me.
When the cloud cleared, he was still in the same place, his little face tear stained and twisted with anger. He opened his mouth to yell, but I didn’t wait to hear what would come from it.
I extended an arm; my hand and supporting appendage morphed and elongated into a jagged spear that cleared the distance between us in an instant. It pierced through his chest, ripping the scream from his throat and it dissipated in the air as just a pitiful yelp.
I lapped up all the pain and terror of his impending death, having been careful not to make it quick. It was more potent than I could have ever hoped for, and when he fell to his knees I fell to mine in turn, retracting my arm. As he died face down in a pile of sparkling dust, I staggered away to the front of the shack, collapsing beside the fire and pot suspended above it. Inebriated, unable to move, I sat hunched and stared into the forest, listening to the rain patter against the shack’s awning.
A gurgled cry came through the wall. I assumed it to be the bound, oily creature and just ignored it, too placated to bother.
But then there was a thud and the cry escalated to a series of wails. With an irritated sigh, I forced myself back on my feet and returned behind the shack, ready to put the creature out of its misery and obtain some peace and quiet. Surprised was I to find another person there, situated between the dead child and statues.
She’d taken it upon herself to free the withered creature from the wall, and with my sudden appearance she turned, dagger-in-hand; all the while the creature wailed at her feet. Her complexion was dark, her body draped in an embroidered tunic the color of blood. Her hair fell in long, dark spirals around her face like a mane. Her features were sharper than the TCS locals from the facility; eyes large and ovoid, animalistic almost. She was not facility-borne.
The woman stared at me, and I at her, until the creature reached for her ankle and she kicked it away. My eyes lowered to it, questioningly.
“I have no fear for you to drink,” warned the woman.
“That’s fine. I’m full, anyway. What are you?”
“Upset,” muttered the woman, a solemn frown cast toward the creature. “You and your kind are ruining everything. Look, you’ve broken my Augur.”
“I didn’t do that.” I pointed at the dead child. “He did. I killed him for you.”
She seemed confused. “And why?”
“I was hungry. How do you know that I feed on fear?”
“There’s no difference between you and that,” she replied, nodding at the creature. “You look different, but your impetus is the same.”
“Impetus.”
“Purpose.”
“Don’t compare me to that thing,” I said, frowning. I’d have never been reduced to such a state. Whoever dared to try would’ve had to kill me first.
The woman studied me with consideration. Then, she abruptly turned and plunged the dagger into the creature’s head. The wailing ceased, and a substance resembling powdered rust ejected from the surface of its body, filling the air in a billowing cloud. When it dissipated, the creature was nothing more than a shriveled husk.
I watched the cloud in mild distress, observant of the similarities it held to my effluvium. I said nothing of it, however, and asked again, “What are you?”
“Just a quantum sorcerer,” she murmured, kneeling beside the husk she’d called an Augur, sadness in her expression. “I’m the protector of this post.”
She wasn’t very good at her job, but I refrained from speaking my mind. “Tell me what you meant—that ‘we’re ruining everything’? Do you know what this place is? How we got here?”
The sorcerer’s sadness waned, and a knowing smile curled her lips. She’d found my question amusing and stood, dusting off her tunic. “Do you like tea?”
“… What’s tea?”
She chuckled and walked past me, toward the other side of the shack. “Come, let’s talk.”
Back at the fire, the sorcerer handed me a narrow, oblong bowl. I marveled at the shape, thumbing its smooth, glass surface. She stirred the pot beside me, ordering that I hold out the bowl. I did, confused, and then she dumped in a spoonful of the pot’s contents. The bowl warmed around it, steam wafting into my face. The liquid from the pot smelled earthy, a bit like mud. I feared she was about to tell me to drink it.
The sorcerer sank onto the wooden stool across from me, sighing as she did. It was an exhausted sigh, a tense sigh; her breath quivered as it left her lips. “Drink,” she commanded, quietly.
I looked down at the bowl. “I’d prefer not to.”
“It doesn’t taste as bad as it looks, I promise.”
“What is it?”
“Tea.”
I wasn’t convinced. “I don’t need this for sustenance.”
“It’s not for sustenance. It’s for something more important than that.”
Nonsense; there was nothing more important than food. “You’ll have to excuse my suspicion, but I think you’re trying to poison me.”
She laughed. “You’re too useful to poison. It’s a gift.”
“An unsolicited gift.”
“Not true,” said the sorcerer, her expression eager, calculated. “You want to know about this place. So, you must drink my tea.”
An ultimatum.
Did I want to know so badly that I’d drink a questionable substance from a rusty pot in a dilapidated shack? My hunger was gone, making room for curiosity. For some reason I knew that it wasn’t poison. Just the look of her told me she wasn’t someone that meant any harm. There was nothing else to base this assumption on, only a gut feeling. But she was being coy, which kept my suspicion kindled.
“Why must I drink this in order to know?” I asked.
“You can’t possibly know through words alone. That’s only half of it.” She nodded at the cup in my hands. “What you’re holding is the metacognitive portion of this place. What I say won’t make sense without it.”
I had no idea what any of that meant, but for the sake of not looking unintelligent, I nodded and slowly brought the cup to my lips. Most of the heat had left the liquid, and now it was lukewarm. It tasted like nothing—water, maybe; I’d never actually drank water, but I imagined this was how it tasted. There was barely a hint of something else, a bit like the scent of forest rain. I couldn’t put it into words, though it wasn’t bad.
The sudden, warm feeling in my throat was another story. I imagined the tea leaving a trail of molten liquid down my insides, spreading across my body in mere moments thereafter. The pain was brief, and then I saw it. I saw everything.
I saw her.
Before the drink she was just a woman in a red tunic. Now she looked younger, girlish, the red tunic electrified in gold threads. There was a painted marking on her face, tapered out from below her bottom lip, across her chin. Tendrils extended out behind her, wavering without wind, like foliage beneath a lake. There were six of them, each resembling sheets of translucent silk.
Sorcerer, indeed.
Beyond her the forest sprang to life. Or the opposite of that.
Flecks of tiny, glittering orbs replaced the rain, and I was no longer damp. The surrounding trees were like the sorce
rer’s tendrils: faint, luminescent outlines, wafting in and out of existence, revealing an underlayer of….something. I couldn’t see it clearly. The only purely solid things left in our environment were the shack, fire and pot. They were anchored here, which explained why they looked so out of place. The forest was an illusion.
“A memory,” corrected the sorcerer, as if reading my thoughts. “You’re no longer an observer, but a part. You’re not tied to the memory any longer, and so it will soon fade.”
“And become what instead?”
She shrugged. “Someone else’s memory. Nothing stays the same here. It’s not a place. Do you understand why you had to drink now?”
“Yes, though it didn’t help. I’m even more confused than before.”
Before she could reply, I left my seat and returned behind the shack. The boy’s body now resembled the statues: a white, crystalline sculpture. The augur was still a disfigured husk. I cocked my head, trying to understand. I couldn’t.
“Foreigners end up like that,” said the sorcerer, behind me. I turned, finding her somber.
“So why aren’t we sculptures?”
“Because we’re not foreigners.”
“I am.”
“Not anymore.” She shifted, looking out toward the flickering forest. “I need your help.”
“… With?”
“Your world has made a mistake. They’ve opened a rift and I need you to close it for me.”
I was unconvinced. “You seem capable enough to do that on your own.”
“I can’t. When I tried, they killed my augur.”
“They?”
“The Pillars. There are six of them.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Your world unknowingly recreated the Six Pillars of the Gate. So long as they stand, the rift will expand. The quantum farers were successful in destroying them and have continued to guard the Gate since. But these pillars are a different kind. They’ve killed our gate sentries and kept us from reclaiming them.”
Covenants: Anodize (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 9) Page 5