“That’s an excellent liability clause if I’ve ever heard one,” I mutter.
“Ah, the cynicism. Careful with that, it’s a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The bite of his statement leaves a stinging bruise, and I rise from my seat in silent retaliation, approaching the gate. It appears to be staring back at me now. There is nothing to fear, I tell myself. Nothing to fear. All of this is cerebral; a dream. Besides, if worse comes to worst, I could simply ask Qaira to yank me out.
I hold up the flask, still nearly full. “Can I take this with me? I can’t finish it all right now.”
Cassima waves his hand in a gesture that says, All yours.
“Are you sure you want to do this?” Mia asks me.
“Of course she wants to do this,” says Cassima. “She’s just like us. She can’t help herself.”
Sadly, he isn’t wrong. But where would we be without our reckless desire for knowledge? So high on the Multiversal scale, might means nothing. Knowledge is the true power. Without another word I walk toward the gate, exhaling slowly as its ethereal smoke embraces me. I notice the Antediluvian scripture etched into the frames.
Just as I step into the great unknown, I realize I didn’t tell Cassima my name.
PART TWO:
THE ARCHETYPES
“Anyone who has ever built anywhere a new heaven, first found the power thereto in his own hell.”
- Frederick Nietzsche
THE MANDALA
THERE IS A MELEKONIAN WORD FOR the feeling, or practice, of dangerous acts. The word is athat, and it is thought to be what makes people reckless, irrational, bereft of logic in search of euphoric highs. It is why people rush so readily into war to face death; why passionate love with another person fetters away the fact they may be wrong, or ill-fitted to them. The Moratalis Church did their best to stifle athat from their subjects. It is carnal, and carnal is savagery. But what they didn’t realize is that athat also blossoms bravery and selflessness. It is what makes us forgo self-preservation to sometimes do the right thing. Whether for hedonism or magnanimity, athat is the only reason life is worth anything at all.
*
There is a painful weight on my chest as I rouse, following a brief moment that I forget the subsequent events. When I remember, I am even more confused. I awakened slumped in a brass pew, center-row, facing an all too familiar scene.
I am in a Moratalis church.
It is empty and quiet; pillars of light shine through the stained-glass windows on the walls. The architecture is irrefutably Moratalis, but the exact church is not. Instead it appears to be a generic image of our church, as if someone were ordered to draw one without having a specific location in mind.
I stand and massage my neck. For some reason it’s stiff; I wonder how long I’d been slumped over like this. And then I realize my hands are empty. Cassima’s flask is gone.
So is my headset.
No.
Panic, long since nettled in the pit of my stomach, begins roiling upward. I turn in place, eyes cast to the ground, realizing my situation.
No.
Had Cassima known? Had he done this on purpose? Is that why Mia looked the way she did? There is no way for attica to tell me my vitals have spiked. It doesn’t need to; my heart is pounding in my ears. With a trembling hand I feel along my belt. Yahweh’s flask is still there, and a moment of reprieve comes flooding in.
“Calm down,” I say aloud. “Calm down, calm down.”
They are still monitoring me. I am still sitting in that succumbence chair. If something noticeably wrong happens, they’ll pull me out.
But not before you go mad, says Fear.
The warmth from a window hits my face, and without thinking I gaze upward. The pattern of the stained-glass catches my attention. It is an unspoken rule that Moratalis adorns each Church window with a mural of Ikhtar the Righteous. This window doesn’t show Him. Instead there is a strange circle, divided into four portions by differing colors. Symbols inlay each portion, but they are unreadable to me. One of them is the signature binary lines of the Antediluvian signage.
So this is it, then. The beginning of my pilgrimage.
Oh yes, very personal so far.
All of this means something, surely. Symbolic. I walk around the hall, looking for clues. There are paintings on the wall, resembling every other Church, but like the window, none hold any motifs of worship. They are white, blank. As if someone made the indention but never placed anything there. Something comes to mind, a thought, or memory, delivered to me in Adrial’s voice.
Blank slate.
I look back at the window, reconsider the circle. A whisper stirs in the recesses of my mind, too weak to climb out from fuzzy memory. I try for a minute, then give up. I return to the pew, rethinking my situation.
I had vis-captured everything leading up to the gate. They will see what happened eventually. How long that could take is anyone’s guess. It could be a second from now, or a year. I don’t believe Cassima has planned my cognitive demise. There is no motive for it.
There is something to be gleaned here. I will make the most of my situation before Qaira and Yahweh yank me out prematurely.
I sip the tonic, waiting for it to take effect. Ironic how it caused the worst anxiety attack of my life the first time I drank it, and now it calms me like nothing else. But this time it doesn’t take effect, and the calm I yearn for never comes.
It will just be me on this pilgrimage, then. Naked, raw, unable to signal for help. You aren’t truly a scholar until you’re met with this kind of situation, I suppose.
I giggle at my dark sense of humor, and then clasp a hand over my mouth to stifle any more. I think I’m already going mad. Oh, well.
I pour the remaining contents of the flask onto the floor, watching it splash against my boots. The tonic is no longer illustrious gold, but clear. Water-like. I throw the empty flask against the window, and am sorely disappointed when it doesn’t shatter. The flask simply disappears.
I leave my seat and head for the only exit of the worship hall. The outside is obscured by hazy, opaque light. My heart is still hammering in my chest, but I lean into the fear, and it seems to dissipate somewhat. A foot before the threshold, I suddenly remember the significance of the mural on the stained-glass window.
It is a mandala. A universal icon for self, or soul—depending on the civilization. All conscious sentient life puzzlingly has a variation of this circular archetype. The intimate details are different, but it is always a circle, separated into quadrants. I recall nights after far too much wine, Adrial ranting about the mystery surrounding unconscious archetypes shared across the universe. Multiverse, even. He heatedly declared that it was impossible, yet somehow existed all the same.
And now, I think I know why. This room is a personal message to me, from Eschatis:
Myself, a blank slate.
How beautiful, the subtlety. The pious scenery adds a very nice touch.
The illumination from the church doorway is deceiving. Outside is gravelly terrain and an ashen sky. The church is the only structure in this lonely, desolate sprawl. But there are clouds instead of celestial bodies, and wind that carries with it the scents of smoke and… something else. Something familiar, but I can’t properly recall it. I suddenly feel very small, and look back toward the church.
It’s gone.
Before I can lament, the atmosphere shifts ever-so-slightly; a subtle feeling that alerts one sack of mass that another sack of mass has entered their space.
“What are you doing here?” demands a deep, authoritative voice behind me.
I turn around and face… a man? A beast? Something in between?
He stands fifty paces from me, clothed only from the waist down. I can’t see his feet, because they are rooted into the ground. His skin is pale, yet barely visible amid all the inked markings of obscure symbols and Antediluvian script. His demand sounded angry, but there is no anger on his face.
His face.
So perfect, so… unreal. Eyes luminating yellow-green, pupils dilating and restricting in tandem, giving off a flash-effect. His hair is as dark as his ink, windblown and tousled. On his head rests a pair of ivory, six-point antlers, baubles dangling from each.
I don’t respond. All I can do is stare at him in awe.
Something wicks across his face in the subsequent seconds. The left side of his lips slowly turn upward into a tiny, crooked grin. My shock has pleased him. “I can take any form you desire, but it seems you like this one.”
I feel myself flush. “Who are you?”
“Answer me first,” he says. “What are you doing here?”
“I don’t know. I’m supposed to be on a pilgrimage.”
His brows raise. “But you’re not sure?”
“As I said, I don’t know. I’ve only been here a minute. Who are you?”
He opens his arms, placing himself proudly on display. “I’m Ikhtar, of course.”
My skin prickles in warning. “You’re lying.”
“Am I? And why would you think that?”
“Ikhtar isn’t real, and you look nothing like him.”
He laughs. “Well, which is it? Either he’s not real or I look nothing like him. Those two facts can’t exist together.”
I ball my right hand into a fist, kneading at my wrist. “You will tell me who you are, or—,” but then I stop when I realize the signature ache of my scythe no longer lives beneath my skin. I am unarmed.
“Or?” goads ‘Ikhtar’. “I believe you were about to threaten me with something?”
“What do you want?” I demand, feebly.
“What I always want when the gate opens.” He licks his lips with a forked, black tongue. “You. But there’s a different taste to you. Not terrible, but unpalatable enough that you’ve forced me to inquire.”
I shiver. He sees this, and smiles. “Are you an Antediluvian? What is this place?”
“If you have to ask, then you shouldn’t be here. Yet, here you are. Who sent you, because I know you didn’t find this path yourself.”
“Cassima Shard,” I respond, unsure of whether that will mean anything to him. If it does, I can’t tell. His face is unreadable.
Ikhtar dismisses my response. “What do you hope to find here?”
“Information.”
This appears to genuinely surprise him. “What kind?”
“Any.”
Ikhtar laughs again, and the ground trembles with his voice. He blinks, the yellow-gold color of his eyes now gone. They are an empty, nebulous black. “What is your name?”
“You haven’t told me yours.”
“I have,” he says. “At least, I’ve given you a name. I don’t really have one; names are irrelevant here. If you don’t like it, you can give me another.”
I say nothing at first, noticing there are silhouetted constructs forming behind him on the horizon. They are sharp, spiraling. “Are you planning to obstruct my pilgrimage, Ikhtar?” I say his name with pointed bane. I am frightened, but don’t show it.
He winks from existence, and I start. Before I can draw a single breath he is behind me, wrapping his arms around my waist, pulling me against him in a gentle, almost loving embrace. His sigh his warm against my ear, lips brushing my lobe. The baubles on his antlers clink, and he whispers, “Absolutely not. All I want is for you to tell me your name.”
His strength is antithetical to Nibli’s. Where Nibli’s effluvia is suffocating and fear-inducing, Ikhtar’s is tempting, alluring, and oddly invisible. Is he another wraith? Here?
Distance. I need to put distance some between us, but can’t move. All I do is stand still, letting his darkness caress me, my breathing labored and trembling. “Iris,” I flounder, pulling up the first name that comes to mind.
“Shhh.” He touches the side of my cheek, and something tingles between my legs. I set my jaw, saving face. “That is not your name.”
“If you know my name, then why must I tell you?” My voice is weak, not even a whisper. I feel humiliated, reduced to this.
“Because you must,” says Ikhtar. “This is how the game is played.”
Game.
Prey.
An inexplicable, mounting pressure in my chest forces open my lips. “Aela,” I say, although the confession is coerced.
“Aela,” he repeats, putting his face into my hair and breathing in. I shudder. “Beautiful. I look forward to seeing you again.”
And then Ikhtar is gone. The embrace is lifted and I crumple to my knees, gasping in both exhaustion and arousal. I am embarrassed, but perhaps humility is part of whatever trial this is. After a moment or two I return to my feet, surveying the sprawl. The only obvious destination is the constructs in the distance.
I begin in that direction, silently praying for someone to yank me out.
THE UNDOING
NO MATTER HOW FAR THE DISTANCE I WALK, THE CONSTRUCTS remain on the horizon. There is an understanding, deep within my gut, that I must make it there; but it is becoming clear the obstacles in my path are not merely physical.
A game, I think. Is this Ikhtar’s mindscape? Is he in full control of it?
The mental strain of rationalizing isn’t here any longer. I am beginning to wonder if I am in Eschatis anymore. That could explain my headset and innate abilities disappearing—whatever this place is, Qaira didn’t tune my resonance for it—but then I must face the idea of there being even more esoteric places beyond Eschatis. Entire realms, or universes, not reserved for physical matter, at least as we know it.
A gust of warm wind hits me, snapping me out of thought. A rustling follows, and I realize patches of dead grass and other flora have begun dotting the gravelly sprawl. The wind brings with it smells that stir familiarity—nostalgia, even. I stop and cast my gaze eastward, seeing a narrowly-paved road running parallel to me. It leads past a small cottage that appears abandoned. Wood is stacked against an exterior wall, the scent of char from a stove faintly lingers in the air. A windmill in the shape of a red orawren spins chaotically atop the shallow roof.
My stomach clenches as I recognize this structure, and reflexively I alter my route to avoid it. But there is something telling me I must go inside the cottage; it is a checkpoint of my pilgrimage. A checkpoint that is unavoidable.
I clench my fists, another reflex rendered useless here, and steer toward the cottage.
*
Consciousness is both a brilliant and terrible thing. Brilliant, in that it allows reasoning and planning and hindsight and foresight and all the things required to shape and mold a fully-thinking being; yet terrible, in that all the slights and blows dealt upon us by life leave little chips and cracks in the hardened mold. And then you realize the mold has never hardened at all.
Thankfully consciousness has layers, and a lot of the trauma we experience is shoved into a bottle and placed on the giant, dusty shelf of our unconscious mind, never to be opened.
But this cottage, the orawren, the scents, the road—all of them were in a bottle, and I have just opened it. I don’t yet know why exactly, only that the feelings of guilt and fear escalate the closer I get. Everything in my being tells me to turn and run, but I remain stalwart in my approach.
I am nearly paralyzed by the time I reach the front door. I linger there, looking at the stained wood and all its imperfections from time and wear. Other memories tug against my mind, memories fractured by youth and logic. The shelf is tipping over. I don’t want to go in.
I don’t want to go in.
My body ignores my mind, and I try the door.
It’s locked, but I hear shuffling from somewhere inside. I press my ear to the door—a lesser action I find very humiliating—and catch the soft padding of footsteps. A sniffle, then another.
I knock on the door, and wait.
Nothing.
I press my ear to the door again. The sniffling is closer, as if whoever is making the noise is right on the other side.
“Hello
?” I call, softly. “Are you alright?”
Nothing.
I sigh and leave the stoop, deciding to case the perimeter. I probably should have done that first.
There is only one window at the back of the cottage, filmed with soot and dust, but it isn’t thick enough to obscure everything within. As I step to the window, I catch the reflection of a large figure standing a dozen yards behind me.
I start and spin, but there is no one in the yard.
My pounding heart tells me otherwise, and my gaze lingers cautiously where I saw them. Eventually I shake the alarm and return my attention to the window. I cup the sides of my face and peer inside. It’s dark, but I can make out shapes of furniture and—;
A face suddenly appears from the shadows, looking back at me. It’s a young girl; her cheeks are sallow, eyes puffy from what I assume was extended bouts of crying. She stares numbly, wiping her nose with an arm. I gaze beyond her, trying to see if anyone else is in the house. I don’t see anything but darkness.
“I’m the one knocking on the door,” I call through the glass. “Can you hear me?”
She hesitates, then nods. Most of her features are obscured, other than her face.
“Are you alone in there?”
The girl looks back, but doesn’t respond.
“Can you open the door? I won’t hurt you.” I point in the direction of the front. She nods, and I head back toward the entrance.
The door is now cracked, but the girl isn’t there to greet me. I pull the door all the way open and gingerly step inside.
The first thing that hits me is the stench. My stomach roils and instinctively I clutch it, placing my other hand over my mouth and nose. It’s a familiar smell, something quite ordinary in my previous line of work. With that said, I know what I’m going to find. The girl’s presence is the only mystery that keeps me from retreating.
The cottage is a standard Emporian yeoman home; open, circular, with a wood stove in the center of the room. Bricks inlay the area surrounding the stove for protection from fire damage. Chairs and a wooden table rest beneath the window, while a two-person seat faces the stove. The cushions are in considerably good condition. This place seems lived in, not abandoned. A woven, circular rug covers the space between the stove and couch, a stack of leather-bound books resting off to the side.
Covenants: Quantum Dream (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 11) Page 7