Shaking, she took a moment to compose herself, before taking one careful step across the room toward the doorway. The decorative mural that surrounded the threshold was now severed by a large crack which spidered across its length, splitting it into several ruined pieces. As she took another step, it became clear that the corridor beyond had buckled and disintegrated, leaving only a gaping pit.
Had Cris gone down there? No, surely not. He’d have been killed…
Wouldn’t he?
She fell to her knees and wept, feeling a sense of utter, overwhelming despair.
Somehow, he was still alive, and conscious.
But Cristian Stefánsson knew that he was dying – and fast. The pain was crushing and overwhelming, overpowering his senses. He could think of nothing else in that moment other than the broken life that was quickly slipping out of him…
And then – as the darkness started to creep in on the edges of his blurred, scarred vision, he saw it.
A tunnel of light…
Though his body remained still, he felt that he was floating upwards peacefully through the long tunnel, at the end of which was a beautiful, bright white light. As he concentrated on it, he heard the voice again.
“Cristian.”
Who are you? He thought. What are you?
The voice replied, “I AM.”
What?
I AM, willed and chosen to live as Self-Conscious Life. I am an eidolon, a shadow between the I AM Presence and your human consciousness.
I don’t understand. Where did you come from?
I have been here for some time.
Were you here when I got here? Do you live here?
Here is everywhere you are. Do you seek oneness with the paramtm?
What?
Those who seek oneness are all that they seek.
He was so confused. The world was spinning. He croaked, drooling blood from his mouth. “I’m dying. I can’t move.”
Lightning flashes, sparks shower, in one blink of your eyes you have mis-seen…
Cristian Stefánsson gasped, and his broken body began to lift away from the spikes that impaled him. The tunnel of light had gone, had moved further away, out of his sight… and he could sense his body more clearly now, all experience of pain diminishing. He lost consciousness in that moment, overwhelmed by the intense trauma he’d just been through. Tumbling, and painlessly.
Fading to black.
“It is done. Rise, Cristian. Rise into your new life.”
He opened his eyes. Blinked. How was this possible? He felt better than he had in years, better than he ever remembered feeling.
It was dark and hot, and a deep rumbling shook the air.
“What…?” he staggered, and got to his feet. He was in some kind of magma chamber, on a thin outcropping of steaming volcanic rock overlooking a vast, glaring lake of molten lava about a hundred yards below him. The heat was intense, almost blowing him from his feet. The lava belched angrily, blazing with red light. If not for his Rãvier suit, which was somehow in perfect condition, Cris was sure he wouldn’t be standing, and the thing glared now with the intense pressure and heat around him. He took a deep breath of the hot air, and realised his body was no longer broken. He wasn’t dead. He was alive! “What have you done?” he blurted. “You’ve healed me!”
“I have more than healed you,” the voice said. “I have made you more than you know. Such is the cosmic power that I wield.”
The earth crashed. “Power? What power?”
“The Divine Power of the All. I have given you this power, to wield as I have.”
“Are you God?” Cris asked, blinking. It seemed like a stupid question, but it was the first thing that popped into his head.
“God is a word.”
“So, you’re not God.”
“I told you. I am an eidolon.”
Cris frowned. This was almost too much for his mind to cope with. “I don’t understand,” he moaned.
“I will show you…” the voice told him.
“Show me what, exactly?”
“Your true nature. The true nature of the universe.”
He frowned, and swallowed dryly. There was a moment of tense silence, the only sound coming from the crashing earth, the fire leaping up from the glaring lake below. “How? Where are you taking me?”
“Put no barriers between you and where you are,” the voice replied. “When the mind is opened, the essence is freed and the body matters not. See with your inner eye, the Truth you are about to behold.”
Cris gasped.
Tears streamed down his face.
20
Blinding event, the brightest light.
Releasing itself as the chaos of eleven dimensional hyperspace, beyond all comprehension. Expanding, evolving, condensing and transforming. A totality, weaving an organic, unitary multiverse of brilliant complexion. Universe upon Universe, an eternal vibration, a single, ineffable moment beyond all of what You understand of time and space. Sent violently crashing, like waves.
An energy. A Force. Put no barriers between You and where You are. When the mind is opened, the essence is freed and the body matters not. See with your inner eye, the Light.
I AM.
See beyond the illusion of your own conscious individuality.
All ‘I’s are but the Light, taking many forms.
There is no pathway in this life. There are no mysteries, no Truth in the written word or any other imagined concept. These are illusions designed by your ego and by others to separate You from that ultimate Truth, that what you are looking for, everything that Is, You already are…
Death is a word, nothing more.
Death is a blissful eternity where the illusion of separation from the universe is dissolved completely. Energy reforms, refluctuates… electrical impulses in the material brain no longer fire, and the ego is no longer required.
Waves crash against the shore, and the endless ocean continues, the unfathomable totality of the All unaffected.
I AM.
How I would long for death.
Or what’s left of it to come, for me.
I am an eidolon, a shadow between the I AM Presence and your human consciousness. I was like you once. My species was known as the Xeilig, but we are universally known as the Gate Builders. Our homeworld was here, on this planet, once a lush and fertile paradise… And our Star Empire spanned many galaxies, connected by a vast network of wormholes.
Then the Asterite came. A powerful, spaceborne creature that the Xeilig deified, and worshipped for many centuries. It needed constant power, converting organic matter into energy to feed its own existence. Once the Entity had ravaged the worlds of the Star Empire, including our home planet, the natural resources were completely stripped. No further life would be able to grow for many millennia. Everything, including vegetation and bacteria, was completely converted. It spelled the End of the Xeilig; then the Asterite moved on…
Only I remained.
I was trapped here, banished to this immaterial plane of existence, for reasons I can no longer remember. Forgive me. After eons of pondering the things that happened in that time, details start to deteriorate. Everything fades.
What I do remember is this. At one time I was a leader of the Xeilig… powerful, and feared, admired for what I was. Now I can hardly remember my given name. I remember the Asterite though. I remember how the Entity sent my Essence here and refused to let me go. I remember how much I hated the Entity for what it had done, how much I longed for final absorption into the waves of the All. I am unable to die now, unable to release myself into the Light, no matter how far into eternity I drift. The Asterite will never let my Essence diminish, as long as it exists.
Belonging neither to the living nor the dead. It is a state of being I have almost become used to, but the memories still haunt me, no matter how far I am removed from the physical world. The pieces of my mind I retain are disjointed memories of things I no longer know why mattered. A single, torturous moment beyond yo
ur understanding of time and space. There is no logic involved anymore, just haphazard thoughts strung together with a single compulsion to continue.
The perfect prison.
Somewhere amidst my stagnant memories a living being intrudes. It allows me to channel the dim speck of my life and focus it into the living world. I feed from the Life that enters here, another presence besides mine. I can feel this creature, this man, from the other end of my tomb. He is powerful, more so than any I have encountered before, but his presence seems familiar, as if he had left an imprint then departed without ever having been encountered before. Strange. Like an echo across the cosmos…
Disturbing. Interesting.
He is drawing much closer. It is almost time to reveal myself.
My ability to interact with the physical world is limited, but the man has taken the bait and sealed his path of fate. Now is the time to reveal myself; a semblance of Life floods my Essence, and I am drawn further into the world of the living. Memories return and I ache with the force of them. It has been too long… too long in the cold and the dark.
I see the man more clearly now. I see his heart, his power, his future. I see that he will find the old place, the dark place, and he will regret it. And it will be my doing.
I see the spaces in the Light you will never reach, human. I have walked your very path and reached its conclusion. What will decide your fate is this: Is there enough truth, enough wisdom in you to see the shapes of malice in my Darkness?
Or will your flicker of Light go out?
Who are you? He asks me.
I am an eidolon.
Cristian Stefánsson felt, in that moment, elated.
He smiled. He was blissfully happy, never wanting this feeling to end.
He was immersed in Light, and as he focused on it, he saw his family – the outlines of their bodies emerging through the brightness, slowly at first, but becoming clearer. He saw them standing in a green field on a beautiful summer’s day. Alexis and Kimberley were watching him, as if curious. It was like a dream. Kimberley opened her mouth to speak.
“Daddy?” she said. “Are you ready?”
- and then they were gone, as quickly as they had come, swallowed up by the intense light.
“Don’t go…!”
Cris blinked, disappointed, and realised that he was still in the magma chamber, exactly where this esoteric astral projection had begun. He gasped, feeling flush with a new sense of understanding, a knowledge of things that went beyond words. He staggered slightly, managing to stay on his feet despite feeling unsteady.
Alexis. Kim…?
Where are you?
The chamber crashed violently around him now, and the lava lake boiled and spat, rolling with some increased pressure. There was a huge roar of stressed rock, and one side of the chamber imploded in a blur of heat and motion. More lava flowed into the chamber, filling it quickly now, coming dangerously close to covering the small outcropping upon which Cris stood. A hot, burning wind whipped at his face. Within moments, he would be consumed.
“Stop this!” Cris roared, feeling a sudden desperation to survive. His senses had gone haywire. “Eidolon! Help me!”
“Help yourself,” the voice said. “Use the Divine Power that you have been given.”
Cris gritted his teeth, tears scorching his face. “What Divine Power? What are you talking about?”
“The Power that dwells within every creature,” the voice told him. “The Power that I have unlocked within you. Now that you know the true nature of your existence, it should flow within you more easily. You must feel it!”
Cris felt an intense rush of energy engulfing his body, empowering him, giving him a lucid sensation like nothing he’d ever felt before. It felt good, like he was in touch with the Light.
“I feel it!” he shouted. “I have it!”
He looked up and gazed at the lava then, and in that moment he focused his thoughts, wanting the lake to recede, to be gone. He commanded it to do so, feeling his connection to it through the All.
And so it obeyed.
As Cris watched, amazed, the entire lake of lava was sucked back somehow, retreating into the cracks and fissures from whence it came, defying all the laws of physics he’d come to know and understand. The chamber was plunged into an immediate, empty silence and darkness, leaving him disorientated but otherwise unharmed.
Holy Shit.
It was some kind of miracle. The entire process had taken less than two seconds.
He licked his dry lips, blinking, feeling anxious. It seemed impossible. “Did I just do that?” His voice now echoed around the otherwise empty, hollow chamber.
“Yes,” the voice said.
“Wow.”
“I have made you more than you know…”
“I saw my family,” Cris said then. “I saw my wife, and my daughter. In the Light. They were there… just like before, in the wormhole…”
“They are One with the All,” the voice told him. “Just as they always have been. I can teach you how to Ascend there, to be with them again, in that Highest Heaven, if that is what you desire. But that knowledge… that Power… will come at a price.”
Cris frowned suspiciously. Something felt wrong here, but the promise of reuniting with Alexis and Kim was too tempting to ignore. “What price?” he asked.
The voice was silent for some time. Whole minutes passed, and Cris stood waiting in the dark, empty chamber, expecting an answer. Just when he started to think that the voice had abandoned him, it said finally, “You must find the Asterite, an ancient and dangerous enemy of mine – and destroy it, utterly. Give me the revenge I seek for the hideous torment it bestowed upon me eons ago. I want that Entity wiped from existence completely. Then, and only then, will I teach you that final lesson. Only then, will you see your family again…”
Cris nodded. A desire, a need to see his family again flared up within him, overruling any objection he might have had to the malicious nature of the eidolon’s request. He had no attachment to this ‘Asterite’ creature, so it mattered little to him whether it lived or died.
“It shall be done,” he said, feeling the Divine Power of the All flowing within him. He took a deep breath, revelling in the awesome sensation.
He would stop at nothing until the Asterite was dead.
This he swore.
The man is blind to the malice in my Darkness.
This man is Doomed. So seals his fate.
Lorelei Chen was profoundly relieved to get back above ground, even if the long climb back up the tunnel of steps had severely winded her. Despite the fresh, sweet tasting oxygen being fed to her through the Rãvier suit’s rebreather mask, she felt exhausted and out of breath, bordering on hyperventilation, the ambient heat of the environment around her oppressive and menacing like a thick, suffocating blanket. The death of Cris had come as a horrendous shock to her; it was so sudden and unexpected, and had thrown her mind into an emotional turmoil like never before, making her want to run, run, run. Initially, she had entered into a daze of sorts, wandering from the devastated, dusty chamber with some constriction in her field of consciousness - inability to think straight, and disorientation. She’d vomited two, maybe three times. As she had run through the maze of corridors, treading the path back the way she’d come, she began to feel agitated, anxious, and an extreme depression. Now, as she emerged onto the desert sands of the crater outside the alien city, she felt faint, unable to stop the flow of tears down her flushed cheeks.
Cris…
She hadn’t actually seen him die, but there was something inside of her, some instinct, that told her it was so. He was dead, killed in that huge cave-in, and there was nothing she could do to change that now. He’d been overly curious about that westerly doorway, she knew, and she’d seen in his eyes that he was convinced something was there, making a strange sound.
I failed to protect him.
I’m so sorry, Cris.
“There’s nothing there, Cris. It�
�s a dead end. You’re imagining things…”
The words repeated themselves over and over in her mind. Had he really been imagining something? Or had something truly been happening, something sinister, something that only Cris could perceive? It was unthinkable. Questions and doubts flooded her mind, adding to her distress.
She reached the Zat’utpyt and climbed aboard, sitting down hastily in the driver’s seat. There, in the relative safety and silence of the vehicle interior, she removed her mask and took a deep breath of the artificially conditioned air. Immediately, her thoughts turned to Damarus, and what exactly Cris’ death would mean for the future. Had this been part of Cris’ so-called ‘destiny’? Was he supposed to die before he could transform into that creature? Or had this put a stop to it all, preventing the creation of Damarus before it was too late? Whatever the case, something didn’t feel right about it all. If anything, Chen felt like a failure. She didn’t feel that she had intervened to such an extent that anything had been prevented at all.
She shook her head, and wiped away her tears. There was no way of knowing what was going to happen now, and she certainly stood no chance of recovering Cris’ body with the limited equipment they’d brought with them on the excursion. All she could do was move on, and hope for the best. She needed to get back to the ship, to the Thunder, to gather her thoughts and take stock of the situation. The Ta’xve)r larvae would have completed their repairs by now. She could use the ship’s sensors to run a scan for any signs of life in the catacombs and caverns beneath the city, and then, in the remotest chance that Cris was still alive, she could bring the ship to rescue him. If she confirmed his death, she would face no choice but to leave the planet, and attempt a return to Earth. Despite her passion for science and archaeology, the loss of Cris overshadowed any desire she now had to explore the ruins. She wanted to go home, to get away from this ancient, lonely place.
She switched on the vehicle’s engine, trying to remain calm as she throttled forward, away from the city wall. The alien landscape rolled past, its barren, rocky nature only adding to her dark, despondent mood.
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