Dysphoria: Rise (Hymn of the Multiverse 6)

by Terra Whiteman

  ~*~

  Once upon a time there was a place with Framers and their chosen hybrids, mongrels swept from their home world and made something special, chosen by white-haired gods. Hundreds of Framers and their chosen spent their days mapping the cosmos of the unfolding, forming multiverse, relishing in knowledge and beauty and all things that effervesced. The chosen ascended from their low-civ status to gods-in-the-making and all was utopian and safe.

  Until it wasn’t.

  Their white-haired mentors turned on them inexplicably—and each other—until all that was left was a ruined, smoldering world and twelve chosen survivors.

  They were no longer gods-in-the-making. They were monsters-at-last, distorted by loss. They swore to kill the white-haired gods and all things created by them.

  All things.

  They were scorn.

  Proxy.

  Vel’Haru.

  And now the shackles were off.

  ~*~

  Yahweh Telei—;

  AT ONE MOMENT WE ALL were seated around the council table in Euxodia, conversing over how to proceed with the attica black-out. The next, Leid was out of her chair and on the ground, seizing.

  We surrounded her, Adrial on his knees, resting her head against his lap. He cradled her face as her eyes rolled into her head and she shook, and shook, and shook. He looked up at me, accusingly. “Did you give her something?”

  Yes, I had. “She ordered me to.” But he and I both knew that any type of substance wouldn’t cause this affect. Unless she drank the entire thing.

  Did she drink the entire thing?

  “I hope that’s all it is,” said Aela. “At least we know she can’t die from it then.”

  And then Leid’s body fell slack, her eyes closed. Attica informed us that she was in stasis. But before any of us could sigh in relief, her body went rigid and her eyes shot wide open.

  Oh, her eyes. They were streaked with violet electricity, like a lightning storm in a blizzard. We called to her, but she was unresponsive. Attica said she was still in stasis.

  “Damn it all,” Adrial said through clenched teeth. “We can’t afford for this to happen right now. Leid, come on, don’t do this.”

  As if she’d heard him, Leid’s lips began to move. But only her lips.

  “I can see them,” she whispered. “I can see them. They’re coming.”

  Then, she vanished. We all flinched at the phenomenon, and then stood frozen in shock. What had just happened? What—

  Ping.

  Attica informed us that a new location was available at the Avadara portal. Halcyon, sure enough.

  XXI

  THE ENVOY

  Regalis Lelain-235—;

  I HAD NEVER BEEN TO A simulated world. Like every other Framer, I was a law-abiding high-citizen of Alpha-Insipia. We had no business here, except now I had to correct the wrongs of our derelict predecessors who had let their curiosity get the better of them.

  Still, I was a sucker for beautiful scenery, and this was quite beautiful.

  It had been too long since I’d seen anything other than an obscure dimension bereft of organic form, and so I lingered on the road and gazed up at the violet horizon. White, glittering sand spanned as far as I could see. An ivory ocean; a world dipped in stardust.

  I sighed in admiration—loudly enough that my companion, Regalis Lassiter-142, shook his head and gave a sigh of his own. His was of impatience. He’d been the only one to volunteer to accompany me. It was understandable; crossing Alpha-Insipia was a daunting feat. Most of the Halon IV Regals had no idea how pressing this was. Not yet, anyhow. Lassiter wouldn’t even have joined me either, if not for his polyamorous relationship with Sarine. Obligatory, as Sarine demanded he kept me safe, even if Lassiter wouldn’t admit to it.

  “Where are they?” demanded Lassiter, eyeing the endless road ahead. “I feel them.”

  I nodded down the road. “That way.”

  We walked.

  *

  Time was a strange vector. In our typical environment we had procured the means to side-step all the pre-requisites for the physical plane. Here, we were bound by them. The idea of having to travel anywhere slower than a thought was… alien.

  But this was not our environment; the rules had been placed by our Codemaker. We could only travel through tears made by the carvings of our dissenters millennia ago. I suspected the Vel’Haru were restricted to similar paths.

  Lassiter and I stopped to marvel at a lonely staircase made of white stone on the road. At the top of the stairs was a metallic disc fused into its surface. Whatever its function, it had been recently used, as low-level kinetic radiation was detected. At this discovery we shared a look, and continued on.

  It was only a short time later that we caught a glimpse of diamond-like spires on the horizon. We slowed, analyzing the edifice—if it was an edifice and not naturally-occurring—and saw the crimson haze of unfiltered resonance surrounding it.

  “Ah,” I said, feeling a smile crack. “There they are.”

  “What is it?” asked Lassiter, awestruck. Seldom had he worn such an expression. Of course his question was rhetorical, because I couldn’t have possibly known either.

  But I wanted to know. Whatever it was couldn’t be detected, which was strange. I began to get the feeling my assumptions were correct and this envoy was a waste of time. Sarine should have listened to me. We shouldn’t have kept that mongrel.

  Without responding I hastened my gait, and Lassiter did too. Perhaps we could get a reading closer to the anomaly.

  No more than several paces further a groan shattered the sky. Lassiter ducked, as if it might actually fall on us. I knew better, somehow.

  Something from the anomaly had punctured reality. Fractals of crimson and indigo light rippled from the diamond spires. A scream—female, indecipherable—rushed past us like a strong gust of wind. Spectral.

  Something had altered Avadara’s coding. Everything felt different. Heady. Foreboding.

  And then we saw a figure emerge from the edifice’s entrance, clad in black robes. It was fleeing. Not a second later something else emerged so quickly that its movements were a blur. The second figure collided with the first, and the robed thing fell, sliced in half at the abdomen. Both pieces of its body began to solidify almost instantly, becoming a black mass of rock amid an otherwise white terrain.

  We analyzed the remains.

  Fehe’zin.

  No, impossible.

  “They’re all dead,” said Lassiter, reading my thoughts. “The Khilikri wiped them out before the Deadsun Rebellion.” His confusion had a twinge of anger to it, which was understandable. There had been so much happening here that we had no idea of. We had now failed two of our Codemaker’s directives. Impurities ran amok.

  The blur became visible as she stood sentry over the Fehe’zin body. One of her appendages was morphed into a sharp, black killing instrument. The very same instrument seen on the gridcast feedback through the captive mongrel’s eyes. She wasn’t the same Vel’Haru, but Vel’Haru nonetheless.

  She took notice of us, remaining still, her amber eyes glittering with caution. A fiery emblem of some sort blazed on her armor.

  We analyzed each other from a hundred paces away, stoic.

  I offered her a smile.

  Her expression hardened. The callousness in her demeanor revealed that she knew who we were. What we were.

  Yes, it was just as I feared.

  This envoy had been a waste of time.

  ***

  Pariah Andosyni—;

  When Zira and I came to, Halcyon’s heart had stopped beating. The light was gone, and we were left in cold silence. Curiously neither of us were actually laying on the ground, remaining in the positions right before we’d fallen unconscious—Zira on his knees, me on all fours—and so I knew not much time had passed. Seconds, at best.

  The proxy obelisk had gained another sphere floating atop its podium; blue, this time. It emanated our typical phosphor
escence, resembling an active portal system. Its light was the only form of luminescence left. We stared at it, still in our subdued positions, astonished.

  —HELP.

  Sapphire’s distress message shook us from our trance.

  —HELP.

  Her thoughts were strained, weak. Help was all she could give us. Zira and I rushed to the entrance, following the trail of Fehe’zin corpse-statues on the path. She emitted a final help as we exploded from the entrance—;

  Just in time to watch Sapphire die.

  Not only die, but disintegrate.

  As the winds swept away the last traces of her in a cloud of silvery black dust, two figures—her murderers—turned their chrome, predatory eyes on us; and we knew exactly who they were, all thanks to those Fehe’zin wall drawings.

  ***

  Regalis Lelain-235—;

  IMAGINE MY SURPRISE WHEN I’d thought such an easy job was done, only to see two more mongrels come up from the edifice. Our razor-cages were still active, lucky for that, but the element of surprise was now gone.

  The first one had been easy. We’d shifted in before she had even moved, and once in proximity our razors had digested her body to its legacy parts. There was nothing left to recover; not a trace of evidence she’d ever existed here.

  But them.

  They could see our hexagonal field alit in crimson light, marking our razors’ edge. This caused them to dart in opposite directions, and I was surprised to see that their speed rivaled our own. Lassiter and I were forced to do the same—he pursued the gold-haired one, I the black—and because of that our razors’ intensity waned. Stacking them together made them lethal; a single razor-cage could only scathe.

  Both of their hands had morphed into black, sickled pincers. The one I pursued had titian eyes, blazing with unrefined hatred. He wore a furious sneer, and I assumed it wasn’t often that a companion of theirs fell. Judging by their prowess alone, they were undoubtedly the apex-civ among our simulations. All that aside, it was only a matter of time before they would tire and our razors would shred them, too. Their impressive acrobatics were but a hair’s length from our maneuvers. All it’d take was one misstep.

  The first to falter was the golden-haired mongrel. Lassiter moved in for the kill, and I turned my attention to his superior, knowing good and well what would happen next.

  Except it didn’t happen like it should have.

  There should have been a whir of Lassiter’s razors chewing up the mongrel’s body. Instead there was a crack, like the sound of two solid surfaces colliding. I turned, halting my pursuit of the black-haired, fiery-eyed mongrel to look at the massive cloud of stirred-up sand where Lassiter and his target had been seconds ago. Now he was a hundred yards away, indentions along the white dunes showed where his body had bounced and rolled from being flung so roughly. His razors were deactivated.

  Lassiter wasn’t moving.

  Then, he turned crystalline. Magenta, reflecting the sky.

  No.

  I stood frozen, unable to process this. Never before had I witnessed one of us die. I thought it wasn’t possible, not like this. Not to them.

  The cloud dissipated, revealing the gold-haired Vel’Haru exactly where Lassiter had left him—on the ground, practically cowering. There was another standing in front of him. She was much smaller than her peers, with long onyx hair and eyes that vortexed sterling and violet sparks.

  Those eyes.

  It was her. The one from our captive’s recast. The one Sarine wished to covet. And now she had killed Sarine’s beloved Lassiter, the first Regalis to fall since our Codebreakers. And though she wore a mongrel pincer, I felt her, and she me, and I knew she wasn’t Vel’Haru. She was something else.

  She was us.

  Oh, shatter-star. She even smiled like us.

  ***

  Leid Koseling—;

  I’d never seen one, but knew it was one all the same. Just like I’d known they were coming for Zira’s group, and that their kind watched from afar, harrowed, trying to figure out what to do about mine. It seemed they’d come to a decision. A bad one.

  For them.

  Yes, I knew things now. Inexplicably, but all encompassing. I understood the proxies’ reasoning behind why they’d done what they did—not to say that I agreed with any of it, but alas, I’d been there, too. All that pain, all that loss. It made you mad. Very mad.

  But with this knowledge, I’d let it go. I wasn’t quick enough to save Sappire, but I would save the rest. I wouldn’t blame myself—only the two responsible, now one—and that was it.

  That was it.

  I smiled. “Welcome to the Multiverse.” I licked my lips, eyeing the hexagonal plasma shield encasing the Framer’s body. “Either you put that thing out, or I will.”

  The Framer returned a smile, but his was forlorn. He was a strange-looking creature, with shocks of white and silver hair that covered the tips of his ears. Glowing indigo face-paint etched lines along his jaw and beneath his eyes. He had no lashes, no brows. Ashen skin. Black uniform, a lot more form-fitting than any of mine would have been comfortable with. Tall and lean, but not frail.

  His eyes held mine. They were noble-silver, streaked with red lightning. “If anything should happen to me, a thousand more of us will take my place.”

  “A thousand more will take your place regardless,” I said. “I won’t ask you again.”

  At that moment, the rest of our court emerged from the crystal spires of Halcyon. We had formed a circle around the Framer, scythes at the ready. They had gained access by the newly-formed obelisk within, which in hindsight was quite amazing. But that was a thought for later.

  The Framer, having no other option, killed his shield. I was watching Zira, recognizing that menacing gleam of his eyes, his body language signaling that he was ready to attack the moment our enemy became vulnerable. His expression screamed for retribution.

  Don’t, I warned him.

  His eyes flicked to me. He killed—

  —Yes, I know. There is more at stake here.

  Zira understood. He relaxed. He’d come miles farther since Calenus, I’d give him that much.

  “Where is Qaira?” I demanded, giving the Framer a moment to process his situation. “Why have you taken him?”

  “To study,” he said, reluctantly. “Honestly I don’t know why Sarine kept him alive. I came here to prove you were dangerous, and succeeded.”

  I’d heard that name before. Sarine wants her, a hunter had said. “Yes, we’re very dangerous, especially when you kill one of us. Where can I find Sarine?”

  The Framer smiled, no longer forlorn but amused. “You can’t.”

  But his eyes told me I could.

  I took a step closer, breaking the circle. “If I promise to let you live, will you tell me then?”

  “Sarine finds you, not the other way around.”

  Pity.

  In a flash I was behind him. Before the Framer could turn around, I reached up and touched the base of his neck. My fingers were gentle as they made contact with his unusually-cold skin, but he began to scream. The anatomy of whatever cardiovascular system he contained illuminated through his dermis in silvery-crimson threads, and I caught the scent of burning flesh. I ignored his cries, closing my eyes, wading through his prime-knowledge. I gathered what I needed, mapped it into my own conscious stream, and retracted my finger. Again, I wasn’t sure how I did this, I just knew that I could.

  When I opened my eyes the Framer was on his knees, shaking, unable to move.

  I turned my back, walking away from the circle. “Zira, go ahead.”

  There came a shhck not a second later, and the Framer’s agony was abruptly silenced. When I turned to look back at my Court, the Framer’s body was a diamond statue, dismembered.

  His name had been Regalis Lelain-235.

  ***

  Pariah Andosyni—;

  Leid’s gaze drifted over each of us, a frown pulling at her lips. “All of you here is a bit
of overkill, don’t you think?”

  “Come again?” asked Adrial, still looking at Lelain’s body in shock.

  “Who’s guarding Enigmus?” she paraphrased. The question wasn’t meant to be answered, since obviously it was no one.

  Adrial’s eyes finally met hers. He was irritated. “You act like you made it clear where you were going when you suddenly vanished.”

  The rest of us were nowhere near adjusted enough to add an opinion. Aela was murmuring consolations to Zira, who said nothing and looked at the ground, stoic. Yahweh was knelt beside the other Framer’s body, poking at it with a newly-formed hand. I was still trying to regain composure from my brush with death. Sapphire’s termination had hit me only seconds ago. All I did was stand there, numb.

  “I think it’s best we don’t return, seeing what they’re capable of,” said Yahweh, rising and brushing sand from his uniform. “We have a better chance of defending ourselves here.”

  Leid gave an indifferent shrug. “They’ll be hesitant to storm Exo’daius after sensing what happened, at least for a little while. I’ve got a few other ideas up my sleeve to bolster their caution.” With that she turned, walking down the road, away from Halcyon. “I’ll meet you all back at Enigmus.”

  “Where are you going now?” demanded Adrial.

  “Getting Qaira,” she said over her shoulder. “Save him a seat at the council, would you?”

  And then Leid vanished.

  We were left scratching our heads, staring after her. Whatever had happened between our departures for Niaphali-X and now had lifted her restrictions for travel. And her eyes were frightening.

  “How does she expect to find him?” murmured Yahweh. He had directed the question to Adrial, but was close enough to me that I’d heard it as well.

  My noble shook his head. “Your guess is as good as mine. She sounded confident, though, so save Qaira a seat.”