In the center of the rug, the little girl is knelt. She is playing with a miniature gym-puzzle of beads of varying colors strewn through wires. She’s wearing a gray dress that runs to her knees, held up by two straps along her shoulders. Her hair is dirty blond, though I wonder how much of the darker tinge is from lack of hygiene. I can’t see her eyes; I watch her, but she doesn’t look at me.
“Are you from the Order?” she asks.
The Order. Of course. “No,” I respond. “Where is your family?”
“They’re in their room,” she says, and then goes quiet. I ask her several more questions, but she doesn’t respond. Conceding, I leave the main room and head for the narrow hall.
There are two bedrooms. The first, I assume, is the girl’s. A straw and feather-stuffed bed lay against the wall, with bookshelves and trinkets atop a dresser. I take a few steps inside, and wince. There is a stuffed animal on the bed; it’s made from old clothing, dyed red. The button eyes stare at the ceiling. I can’t tear my gaze from it, even when my vision blears from a combination of the dry air and mounting sorrow. The sorrow begins to asphyxiate me, and I force myself to face away. I caress my forehead and utter a calming mantra, but the calm is snuffed out before given any chance to work. The mirror on the dresser shows Ikhtar’s reflection leaning against the wall, a sinister smirk on his face. The baubles on his horns glint at me, even in absence of light.
I spin and only empty space greets me. But I know he’s here, watching.
I pull myself together and recede from the girl’s room. The other door is slightly cracked. The stench is unbearable at this point. I already know what I’m going to find; I don’t understand why I even need to see it, but I’m not entirely in control of my own actions. The puppeteer is Ikhtar, and for whatever reason I must enter this room.
The door only opens a third of the way before a thunk shatters the silence. There’s a creak, and something brushes the interior of the door. I freeze, dissect the sound, and conclude not to attempt opening the door any wider. Instead I squeeze myself through the crack, shimmying sideways in order to fit.
A man is hanging from a thick, metal rack just behind the door frame. A tipped-over stool lays on its side beneath him. His body still sways from my disturbance. He was middle-aged, or approaching middle-age, with fair hair and features. The bluish tinge of his skin and bloating extremities tells me he has been here for at least a few days. His face, although marred by decay, is somewhat familiar. I get a flash of him, still alive, seated near the wood stove with one of the leather-bound books on his lap. The memory is fleeting—just an instant—and I’m not sure if it’s a memory at all. Perhaps just a part of Ikhtar’s game. But I can no longer ignore the unsettling knot that has been tightening around my sternum since coming across this cottage, now so taut that my spine might snap. I wince, winded by the tension, and continue to stare at the dead man’s face, even though I don’t want to. I realize I’m trembling. After a few more moments of this visual torture, I am able to force my eyes away and scan the rest of the room.
The scan is carried out haphazardly; I don’t want to see anything else. Little pieces are filling up my mind, connecting like magnetic sand into a horrifying, bigger picture. Yet no matter how rushed, it is impossible to ignore the woman huddled in the corner near the bed, her head tilted sideways, mouth agape, murky eyes staring right at me.
Qaira, Yahweh, pull me out.
Please, pull me out.
I manage to get halfway across the room, but freeze at the bed. Then, I sink to my knees as I look over the woman. Her loose, gray dress is covered in aged blood and there are gashes across her neck and wrists. In her right hand is a paring knife.
The sound of chimes fill the room and I nearly fall over, dizzy. Another flash shows the woman alive, leaning over with a gentle smile, holding a much newer-looking stuffed, red animal. The floral scent of her hair wafts around me, and I feel safe and warm—;
The stuffed toy has a name. Do-da.
And then the picture is complete.
I know this house, these people.
I know the sad, bereft little girl in the family room.
She is me.
She was me.
*
She peeks through the door as the shouting and crying escalates.
Her mother and father haven’t been right for over a week. She’s noticed her mother starting to mumble to herself while tending to the garden, as if having a conversation with someone, but no one else has ever been there. Her father seems sad, and whenever they are alone he will go out and chop wood until it gets dark, even when they don’t need any. He would cry from the pain in his arms as her mother puts soothing lotion on his shoulders. Both of them have all but stopped eating, yet still serve food to the girl.
And at night she would fall asleep confused, knowing something was wrong but her mind is too small to understand. And then she would dream, and whenever there were nightmares she would start awake, shivering in sweat, hearing her parents’ screams around the house. The next morning she would notice scratches and bruises on their faces and necks, sometimes their arms. But they say nothing when she asks what happened.
And now here is the girl, at the door, watching her parents’ undoing. She is too scared to enter, only watches until neither of them move. The sound of her father swaying against the door feels like a smack to her heart. In her mother’s final moments, she sees her daughter watching and opens her mouth to cry, but no sound ever comes.
*
The Moratalis Church mandated that all ‘gifted’ children were to be reported to the Emporia Council as soon as their abilities surfaced. It was a safety measure, as non-gifted parents were often ill-equipped with handling these abilities, especially those blossoming from their children who have not been trained on how to use them.
But I was an only child, my mother left barren after having me.
Some parents hid their gifted children, knowing good and well that once the Order came knocking, it was the last time they’d ever see them. During my employment, I encountered innumerous gruesome aftermaths of homes whose children were never reported—scorched houses from pyrokinesis, electrocutions, and other things even more horrific still. Never did I think I was one of these children, taken from a home bearing a similar fate. I didn’t even remember, until now. I was so young, my parents’ deaths so traumatic, that the memories were stuffed into a jar and shoved to the very back of my unconscious shelf.
I was lucky. Many children remembered their transgressions and bared the scars for the rest of their lives. That an act of such love could result in such atrocity was soul-shattering. Thus was the way of the Clergy.
And now here I am, knelt on the floor, staring at my dead mother. I am raw at first, yet the rawness slowly fades to numbness, which is even worse. I imagine reaching up, gripping my clavicles, and tearing open my chest.
I want to scream.
I want to apologize; beg for forgiveness.
It’s too late for any of that.
I wobble to a stand and leave. On the way back to the family room, I take Do-da from my childhood bed. The walls have come alive, turned skin-like, and cancerous. My child self is still on the floor where I left her, nestled in the sighing, crawling, festering wounds around us. She does not seem to notice, or has manifested the scenery herself. Both are equally possible. She is one of the strongest Ash Psionicists of her generation, unbeknownst to her.
“Aela,” I murmur.
She looks up at me, going still.
I kneel to her level, handing her Do-da, trying to smile. “You’ll be okay. This wasn’t your fault.” It was my parents’ fault; but they hadn’t known what would happen.
“Who are you?” she asks, her eyes filming with tears.
“Someone like you,” I say, trying to quell my own tears from blotting my vision. “Be strong. The Order will come for you soon.”
“Are they going to put me in jail?”
“No. They’re goi
ng to make you special. They’ll take care of you.” And completely ruin your moral compass, and desensitize you to ultraviolence, and turn you into a zealot—but none of this I mention.
My child-self looks down at the puzzle, pushing it aside. She hugs the stuffed animal close to her chest. “Can you stay with me until they come?”
“I’ll try,” I say, and really mean it. The knot has begun to loosen, and I realize now that it was her feelings, not mine, that I was experiencing all along.
In response, she embraces me with a single sob of relief. I am caught off guard and nearly tip over, but then wrap my arms around her and pull her little face into my neck. Her comfort is my own. I close my eyes and we stay like this for an eternity, until my arms clutch air. I open my eyes and see that she is gone. The wounds on the walls are gone as well.
Ikhtar is sitting on the sofa. He claps three times, slowly, as if to applaud me. His expression is one of mockery, but something else wicks behind his yellow, pulsing eyes. The aura around him is more pronounced in the darkness, both its vibrance and color identical to the strange energy of Eschatis. His lips turn upward into a devilish smirk as I sit battling tears, and at this moment I’m torn between clocking him and begging for his touch.
“You handled that well,” he remarks. “I like the way it tasted, too.”
I squint, confused, but say nothing.
“I don’t usually get to taste things like you. Most of my guests have already been squeezed of all their juices by the time they arrive.”
“Why are you doing this? What’s the meaning?” I demand.
Ikthar leans forward and rests his elbows on his knees. His eyes burn into mine. Such a mortal gesture from a monstrous and beautiful creature. “You don’t understand what’s happening yet? You’re not supposed to be here, Aela, but instead of consuming you whole in punishment for your transgressions, I’ve decided to give you a chance.”
“By torturing me and consuming my pain?” I clench my fists. “Are you a wraith?”
Ikhtar’s snarl turns into an amused smirk. He leans back. “I’m a security system, nothing more. What I am to you is entirely of your making.” He tilts his head. “So, am I a wraith?”
I barely heard the last part of his spiel. My mind skidded to a stop when he said ‘security system’. “What are you securing?”
“I can’t tell you that,” says Ikhtar. “You’ll know when you’re ready.” His deific eyes scan the remnants of my old family home. “All of this is merely preparation. It seems like the first trial weighed heavily on you.” He leans forward again, reaching for me. I want to flinch away, but don’t. His large hand cups the right side of my face. His skin is oddly smooth, warm. “If you want, I can make your burdens feel better.” Ikhtar leaves his seat and stands over me. I look up at him, remaining on my knees, as if in worship. When I don’t respond he yanks me up with a growl and presses himself against me, his arms anchoring my waist.
I don’t struggle. His effluvium is a nerve agent that renders me paralyzed and yearning. But a war wages inside of me; its violence bleeds from my eyes. Ikhtar leans down, his lips inches from mine. “Tell me when,” he whispers, knowing full well that I am unable to speak.
Being rendered so helpless is infuriating. Vel’Haru nature is anything but. I scream inside my mind, so loudly that something cracks.
We are in my memory. Mine. Not Vel’Haru, but certainly not helpless either.
Something changes in the air around us. There is a surge, and my heart skips a beat. I can feel the charge across my skin, and Ikhtar’s charm is rinsed away all at once. I emit a single thought. Just one.
Ikhtar stumbles back, as if I’ve shoved him. The shock in his expression is quite rewarding to see.
“When,” I say, right before half the cottage collapses in on him.
He disappears beneath the rubble with barely any time to look up. It now appears as if the house was cut cleanly in half by a cosmic butter knife. I stand listless on the intact side, waiting for whatever would happen next.
Clap, clap, clap—;
I turn toward the sound. Ikhtar is once again applauding me from the front doorway, now ajar. He is unmarred, and very amused.
“Impressive,” he says. “See you at the next trial.”
And then he is gone.
All of my bravery deflates the moment Ikhtar vanishes. I sink to my knees with a violent exhale, forced to process everything now that the danger has abated. I think of my dead parents, and the child-like me sitting placidly on the floor, numb from trauma and guilt. I clutch at my head, trying to will the pain away.
Why would Cassima send me here? Did he know what horrors awaited me? Did he think I could handle this? Had he?
Qaira, Yahweh, pull me out.
I am a coward, a murderess, and I don’t want to be here anymore. No one can hear me, and the only way out is forward. This is my undoing.
Unable to hold everything in anymore, I place my face into my hands and sob.
THE LABYRINTH
I SPEND A WHILE COLLECTING MYSELF, or trying to at least, before venturing on. The cottage, like the church, disappears after being just a few hundred yards at my back. Now there are only patches of brown and yellow grass that crunch beneath my boots, an ashen sky, and wind that has grown quite brisk since my arrival.
The constructs looming on the horizon are growing closer, but still seem very far off. The wind picks up and I pull up my hood, shivering into my coat. Being at the mercy of the elements is a strange sensation, even more strange is the fact that although I’m cold, I’m neither thirsty nor hungry, or even tired.
But I am sad, the unburied memories having left an open wound inside of me, festering more as I linger on them. An occasional tear escapes my eye without my realizing, until the tickle on my cheek makes me wipe it away. The tears are water, not blood. I keep a vigilant eye on my surroundings, anticipating Ikhtar’s return.
I’m a security system, nothing more.
All of this is merely preparation.
His words spin circles in my mind as I try to parse their meaning. For now there is none, but I vow to be less reactionary during our next meeting. I need to pay closer attention to what he says, maybe even trick him into revealing more. This is a game—;
A game of wits.
Every scholar’s favorite past time.
Soon I come across a randomly-placed staircase of white and cream-speckled marble. It is wide, only twelve steps high, and leads to seemingly nowhere. Thrown, I freeze several feet away, remembering the staircase I saw in Eschatis’s sprawl. Are they connected? I haven’t a clue.
My gaze shifts between the distant constructs and the stairs. I am unsure whether to ignore this oddity and press on, or climb it and see what happens. I move a few paces closer, and that is when I spot the series of vertical notches in each step. The Antediluvian language.
This is Eschatis, and here is a testament to that fact, but where in Eschatis I am remains a puzzle. I am beginning to form the hypothesis that there are numerous layers to the metaphysical realm, the wayfarers’ domain being only the surface— a notion that is daunting and exciting all at once.
I climb the stairs, feeling heady. Halfway to the top, the wind stops and the sky fades. It is completely silent now, and I can hear my breathing. I continue the rest of the way, ignoring the nagging tingles of caution at the nape of my neck.
My boot hits the top step, and I am assaulted by a shock of blinding light—
*
— and then I am laying in a fetal position in front of a bonfire.
I start to my feet immediately, surveying the familiar cavern walls laden with Antediluvian script. Relief washes over me when I think I’ve made it out, but the relief turns to dread as soon as I realize that I am still missing my headset.
The cave doesn’t feel the same, either. The hearth isn’t blue, but red. It looks like normal fire. There is a distant, repetitive drip, drip, drip sound from somewhere within the umbra. The ai
r is crisp, cool. I don’t move for a while, analyzing the situation. The charge is gone from my skin and I can’t feel the vibrato in my mind anymore; I am once again nothing. Meek.
It seems Ikhtar took some measures this time.
All right.
I take a deep breath, clench and unclench my fists, and move toward the tunnel.
No nightmare comes as I am swallowed by shadows, only a brief sense of unease before the tunnel opens into a geodic cavern that stretches further than my weak, lesser eyes can strain to see. The dripping water is from the cavern ceiling, somewhere beyond the vacuous black. When one taps my head I flinch and look up, only to get hit in the face with another.
I sidestep the water’s path (at least I hope it’s water, Cosmos help me) and gingerly weave through the darkness. The Enigmus emblem on my coat breast suddenly sparks, bleeding light around me; a dome, roughly ten feet in radius. This is the first time the emblem has burned in Eschatis. I don’t know what it means, but I am thankful for the light.
I traverse the cavern for what seems like an eternity, dodging some stalagmites and tripping over others. Eventually the faint and familiar sound of chimes permeate the silence. I am inured to this phenomenon, and welcome it.
I reach another staircase, this one not so extraordinary. There may be Antediluvian script, but I can’t see it nor do I really care anymore. The novelty wore off a while ago, not to mention I have nothing with which to log any of it. A cylindrical partition sections the stairs, made of craggy cavern wall. The steps spiral upward, into the unknown.
I don’t even hesitate this time. Anywhere is better than here.
The staircase leads into a grand hallway constructed of metal and opaque stone. The space is vast, the ceiling at least a hundred feet high. Antediluvian script lines the adjacent walls, giving off a décor-effect. There are panels above that, spaced fifty paces apart, holding moving images of swirling fog and cosmic matter. I am stunned by the scenery. It takes me a good while before pressing on.
Covenants: Quantum Dream (Hymn of the Multiverse Book 11) Page 8