I stared at her for a long while after she’d finished. “How do you expect me to kill a Pillar if you can’t?”
The sorcerer’s gaze moved slowly toward the sculpture of the boy. “Because you already have. There are five left.” To my questioning stare, she added, “This was my gate. Thank you for securing it.”
As if on cue the lonesome, giant doorway behind the statues illuminated. The space between the frame became a screen, and as the light faded a vast, misty area materialized. I walked behind the structure, confirming whatever I was seeing through the gate was contained between the stone frames. I looked back at the sorcerer, wondering what I’d gotten myself into.
“What is your name?” I asked.
“I don’t have a name. Names are given to those bound by time and place.” She paused, looking past me, as if conflicted. “But I did have one once; it was Laith.”
“Laith,” I repeated in a whisper. “I’m Nibli.”
“I know.” She smiled and took a small step forward, reaching out to caress the side of my face. I flinched at the touch, not understanding the gesture. “I’ve given you your orders. Go, hurry.”
Orders?
“I haven’t agreed to help you,” I said. “And I don’t take orders.”
Laith looked up at me with wide, anticipatory eyes, the innocence of her expression soured by a malefic grin. “You drank my tea and consigned your service to me, indefinitely.”
So it hadn’t been poison, but a collar. “Is that so? There’s nothing stopping me from laying you down next to that.” I tilted my head toward the ‘pillar’, keeping my cold gaze on her.
“Everything is stopping you, Nibli. Go ahead and try.”
I raised a hand with the intention of wrapping it around her throat. An inch from her, my arm stopped moving, entirely against my will. I pushed, and pushed, as my hand trembled with mounting exhaustion, until there were spots behind my eyes and I could no longer persist. She’d only stood there smiling coyly, and her demeanor alone turned me white-hot with anger.
“What have you done to me?” I growled. I’d just been freed from years of imprisonment, only to become a slave.
“I mean you no harm,” she assured me. “But I do need you. My Augur is dead.”
“What does that have to do with me?”
“Your world remade the Pillars,” she began, sizing me up, “but lucky for me they also unwittingly created an Augur.”
Was she comparing me to that creature? “I am not—”
“An improved version, definitely; one that can think and speak. If this place is saved then I won’t be lonely anymore.”
I stared at her in disbelief, having nothing to say. I turned and walked into the forest, hoping that if I just left, all of this would go away. I couldn’t strike her, but surely I could leave.
After a moment I turned and looked back. The shack, gate and Laith were all gone. Only the statues remained. The forest was growing more transparent by the minute, and as I tried to think of what to do next, the sound of heavy thuds echoed from the faded surroundings.
A monstrous creature passed, flickering into existence, at first as an outline. With each step, it grew more tangible: four legs with hooved feet, scales that shimmered like the ground, a blue luminescent mane and tail, sparks coiling across its torso and arching neck. There was a metallic horn rammed into the top of its head; the gnarled, afflicted flesh around the object made it obvious someone, or something, had put it there. The creature had emerged from the surrounding forest and padded toward the statues, turning once to look at me with an unnervingly-intelligent face. I swore it grinned then, showing me a row of razor-sharp teeth.
I remembered the terror of the guard, the residual beastly shadow that had stained the locale as a result. My pet, the boy had called it.
It stooped its head and began grazing at the crumbled bits of stone corpses. I could hear the crunch and crackle as its teeth ground the pieces to dust. Powdery glitter fell from the corners of its mouth as it looked at me once more; curiously, this time.
I couldn’t help but smile when it moved on to the statue of the boy, crunching greedily. It was no one’s pet. Pets, to my (limited) knowledge, were loyal.
I took several steps forward, and it didn’t seem to mind. When I was several feet away, it only gave me a glance of acknowledgement and returned to its meal. My effluvia had no effect, and though I couldn’t eat it, maybe it’d prove useful to me in a different way. Clearly the beast didn’t see me as a threat; by the look of it, threats were very limited. Placing my life on the table with this assumption, I extended a hand and touched its back.
The sensation was visceral; the jagged scales left prickling tingles across my palm. The sparks, lassoing its midsection, jolted my skin with a gentle current, leaving a weak vibration that coursed through my forearm. I retracted my hand, massaging my fingers. The beast munched on. It didn’t seem to mind my touch, either.
“Did someone think you up?” I whispered, recalling what Laith had said about this place.
Having consumed all the statues, it only stared at me.
I hadn’t expected a response, but swore it knew what I’d said.
*
I was left with no choice but to do as the sorceress commanded. Not because she’d commanded it, but so far the ‘Pillars’ were the only things around here that I could eat. Probably her doing, but until a solution to my ever-impending starvation problem presented itself, I had no choice except to continue with the hunt.
The familiarity of the forest was gone. Whatever that had happened at the shack swept the boreal landscape away, leaving only mist and shiny, salt-like hardpan for miles and miles. Pockets in the fog revealed the same star-filled sky. It could have been hours or days that I’d traveled across this land of nothing; Laith had said time wasn’t a function here, but my hunger pangs and growing weakness served as a stark reminder that her rules didn’t apply to me.
The beast had decided to follow.
I named it Nara. I don’t know why.
It seemed to know its name within a matter of minutes, and even let me sit on its back while it trotted along slowly, aimlessly, through the foggy expanse. I was thankful for Nara, as without the ride I would have been worse for wear.
Soon after, I grew lightheaded. My field of vision narrowed as blurry flecks danced along the corners of my sight. My insides churned and rumbled, and I began to daydream of my last kill; the sweetness of that fear, the way it had warmed me.
I slumped forward, resting my chest on Nara’s neck, letting my arms dangle. It felt like forever since we’d begun our trek through the misty wasteland, and there was still no indication of this nothingness letting up any time soon. I was going to die here, wasn’t I? I imagined Nara trotting into a magically-inhabited area an eternity later, still hauling my then-shriveled husk of a corpse.
I shivered, then fell asleep as Nara strode along on auto-pilot.
*
I awoke with a start however-long later, my arms alit with hot, sharp pain, indicating that my reserves were dangerously low. I craned my neck as the rest of my body revolted, furious that I’d dare do anything so unessential right now. Nara sensed my discomfort and made a chittering sound, hastening its gait.
The scenery had changed. We moved over a strange terrain of statues. Some looked like people, others not so much. Most did not resemble my ilk or our creators in the slightest, but they were definitely some form of ‘person’.
Their composition varied, too. Some were made of the same crystal rocks as the unfortunate souls at the shack; but others were smooth, in various shades of ivory and black. When I looked around us, thousands upon thousands of statues stood as far as I could see; like forgotten memorials of an ill-fated legion, half-buried in a sea of fog amid a rotted vale.
My exhaustion was silenced by wonder, and I sat up straight to better take in the surroundings. Had these people met their demise here? Or was this another Pillar’s dream? If it was the latt
er, this Pillar seemed a little more deranged than the last. My skin prickled with caution—;
And then I heard a noise.
A voice.
More than one. Voices.
I couldn’t see the source. Instead it sounded like they came from the sky, looping in echo around me. It was a conversation in a language I didn’t know, but judging solely by the tones I presumed the voices belonged to a male and female. They were quick, tense.
Nara suddenly stopped, and I looked forward in question. In front of us was a transparent, rippling wall that separated us from an entirely different environment. It looked like normal facility terrain. The barrier seemed to only be a thin film, but when I pushed against it, it barely gave. Pushing too hard sent a shock through my arm, up my shoulder and down my spine that made me cry out and crumple to my knees in temporary paralysis. The barrier ran endlessly in both directions, as if everything stopped right here.
What was this wall? What did it mean?
The source of the voices were a mere foot in front of me. A strange-looking pair, one very short, the other taller, both thin with spindly arms and legs, clad in all black. Both had dark hair and light skin, but any more discernable features were obscured by the rippling wall.
I should have been confused and disturbed by this phenomenon. Instead my brain screamed FOOD.
They were sentient; they were emotionally tense. I could feel them like the waft of a savory meal. And then I was thrust into starvation instinct. I no longer cared if I died, paralyzed by the wall; I’d have rather died than feel like this anymore.
With a brutal heave, I threw myself at the wall. It gave more than before and I managed to press myself almost completely into it. I gnashed my teeth as the shocks assaulted my limbs, fighting off convulsions out of sheer desperation for survival. My arms wrapped around something solid. I didn’t know what; I couldn’t see.
And then the wall finally recoiled and I was flung backward, still gripping the prize in my numb, trembling arms.
Indeed, there were quite a few things I’d learned while stuck in this dream for an extended amount of time. But the most important one was that I never should have reached through that blasted wall.
~*~
Once upon a time, a scared little boy named Ande First sat alone in a dark, cramped room and dreamt of a protectorate beast.
Whenever they weren’t hurting him, he sat still and squat in the corner where the light rays didn’t shine, where no one could see his anemic frame or bruises from all the needles, and imagined riding on the beast’s back as it trotted wistfully through a beautiful forest.
Never did he realized that he’d never seen a forest before.
He would always go to sleep when his beautiful pet reached a clearing to graze, and he’d lie in a patch of cushy grass where the sun hit him just right.
He named his pet Nara. He didn’t know why.
V
QAIRA
PARIAH WAS ON HIS FORTY-FOURTH RIFT WAVE relay when I finally caught a node that synched with our headset frequency. It wasn’t an exact match, but enough for us to at least move on to the next step. Eight fucking hours later. This was hopeless.
Pariah was a strange creature; strangest of all of us. It’d taken forty-four reps of him clutching a chunk of crystallized Framer-corpse, converting the energy pattern into a sensible frequency transmission—relayed through his mouth, no less—for this level of strangeness to really settle in.
“Got it, sort of,” I hailed, and he set the shard on the desk, rubbing his jaw with a wince. Pariah had held his mouth open for the entire investigation.
“Great.”
“Now give me a finger.”
He stared at me. I looked up from the headset after not receiving a response. “Why not your finger?” he said, incredulous.
“Because I need all ten of them to do this.” I held up the headset.
“It’ll regenerate in minutes.”
“Stop being a fucking pussy.”
“I don’t know what that phrase is supposed to mean, but here’s my finger.” He flipped me off.
“You don’t know what the term ‘pussy’ means, but you know that gesture?”
“You’ve done it enough around here for me to get some idea.”
“Seriously,” I sighed, “I need your finger. I could do mine but we have only hours left, and every minute counts.”
Pariah made a sound that I could only compare to a cat getting a pencil shoved up its ass. He then swiftly moved to the desk adjacent mine, where Yahweh kept his shard-excising tools, and severed the little finger of his left hand without so much as a moment’s hesitation. Honestly with all the hoo-ing and haw-ing he’d done, the sudden lack of reluctance was mildly appalling.
He threw the bloody finger on my desk, the fingernail already starting to petrify black. “There,” he muttered, turning on his heels. “I’m not helping you anymore.”
“Thanks,” I called lightheartedly, before he disappeared behind the swirling veil of the RQ2 entranceway.
Adrial replaced him almost immediately.
I averted my gaze and returned to the work at hand. Within a matter of seconds all of Pariah’s finger had turned to obsidian, and then I realized I had nothing to chip it with.
“Toss me that scalpel,” I said to Adrial as he approached. He looked around cluelessly for a minute, then found it atop Yahweh’s desk.
“There’s blood on it,” he announced, disturbed.
“Yeah, that’s okay.”
Adrial handed me the scalpel and then peered over my shoulder. “Pariah was the donor?”
“Correct.”
He smiled. “Well, that explains the look on his face when he passed me. How are you faring?”
I shrugged. “If calibrating our resonance to match the frequency of the continuum wavelength takes even a third as long as it did to find the frequency itself, then we are wholeheartedly fucked.” I looked around, irritated. “Where’s Yahweh? He would prove useful to me right now.”
“I don’t know.”
I sighed, thinking back to the last time we’d spoken alone. Surely Yahweh wouldn’t be sulking at a time like this. I pinged him, trying to repress the annoyance and urgency I felt. Playing it cool.
During this time Adrial had taken a seat at the adjacent desk, wiping crystal fragments off the bench. “Well, whichever way our circumstances turn, thank you for your dedication.”
I lifted a brow, knowing Adrial well enough to doubt he’d come here solely to boost my morale. “What is it?”
His gaze drifted aside, as if carefully contemplating his next words. “How are you feeling?”
“…What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“With everything. Right now.”
“Are you asking how I feel about my wife getting sucked into a rift we know nothing about?” I asked. “Because I’d think my feelings were obvious.”
“I’ve been told this place—if it is indeed the place Zira has been—can put a tremendous strain on one’s psyche.”
“And?”
Adrial hesitated, meeting my hardening stare. “I want to make sure you’re up for the task. I want to make sure I’m not compromising all the progress we’ve made by sending you in.”
“I’m going in. That’s not up for debate.”
Adrial sighed. “Qaira, I am the authority here—”
“I don’t give a fuck. You’re not benching me. Not when it concerns Leid.” And then suddenly, something clicked. I couldn’t help but laugh, which surprised Adrial. “So, did Zira snitch on me? Tell you I’m not mentally fit enough for this? Did he come crying to you that I was being mean to him?”
“Of course not,” said Adrial, furrowing his brows. It was almost convincing, but he’d responded too quickly. Liar. “But the animosity between you two is very obvious.”
“He left Leid there,” I said. “She got pulled into that rift, and then he turn around and left. Just like that.” I raised two fists and ope
ned both simultaneously, as if to say poof. “That you’re questioning my ability to see our mission through is laughable.”
“Zira did what any logical scholar would,” rebutted Adrial. “Would anyone other than you charge headfirst into a dangerous unknown? Had Yahweh been there instead, wouldn’t he have done the same as Zira?”
“Oh, so now I’m illogical.”
“No. Well, yes. Honestly I’m glad you decided to sit that investigation out.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I snarled. “You can support Zira all you want. Apparently I’m the only one who remembers how he tried to kill us on the Ezekiel, and then again in Akkaroz.”
“He was following the charge of his Noble.”
“He has no fealty to us.”
“He has more fealty to the Court of Enigmus than you ever will.”
There was a bite to Adrial’s rebuttal. It’d felt like a sucker-punch, and I was left momentarily winded. I wanted to tell him to get fucked, but there was no point. Instead I continued to cut fragments from Pariah’s finger, trying to get a chunk sizeable enough to test.
“Think on this some more. Stay level-headed,” Adrial went on. “You both need to find some kind of middle-ground. I won’t allow friction on a mission. If you don’t want to be benched, reel yourself in.”
“Are you done? I have a lot of work to do, if you haven’t noticed.”
Likewise, Adrial knew me well enough to understand that my remark was the only form of concession he’d get. After a moment of him sitting there and me ignoring him, he nodded, stood, and vacated the room. Only then did I stop to stare numbly at the desk, replaying the conversation in my head, bruised by betrayal.
Always the black sheep, no matter what I did to prove otherwise.
Fine, I’d play nice.
Right up until the moment that they wished I hadn’t.
*
An hour and four pings to Yahweh later, he finally returned my query. I’d just gotten our resonance comparison down to four nodes when his voice appeared in my head.
Covenants: Anodize (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 9) Page 6