In the sixty fifth generation one who was known as Belili took over the Order of Dao. She became the leader who mapped their course forward.
Eventually they found what they were looking for. They located the place in space and time where the one with the special mind they sought existed. They found the one who could reach the Threshold.
He was the one who could move between different states of energy and reach the ultimate threshold where existence was dying.
***
As Rahim recorded this he saw a Catalina dark and beautiful. He saw Belili…a lover of death.
He continued writing though as he did so his hands began working feverishly and less precisely. His writing was becoming chaotic with no meaning. His mind was outpacing his body at such a rate that he could not even record his thoughts any longer.
As he wrote he again looked up at the ceiling. In his mind he saw the memory of a door. For a moment he saw this doorway very clearly. The door opened and he saw a path. He was following the events of the derivative that he had discovered and he knew what was unfolding outside the Citadel. In his mind he traced the path of what was to come.
Suddenly in his mind’s eye he saw the path to the Threshold of Degradative Concurrence before him. He saw that it began in a dark city under a frozen sea.
Rahim’s mind was brilliant and beautiful. He could not see the complete path but he was beginning to see the direction that must be traveled. He continued to write even though his characters were nonsensical. His strokes took him from Verse to Verse. He was getting close to the Threshold in his minds eyes. As he wrote he was crying.
However, somewhere far away in another Verse, there was one thing that a Monster in a city of the dark understood. There are few minds who can hold knowledge of the Threshold of Degradative Concurrence.
Rahim was close. Suddenly…he saw it. He saw the great Threshold appearing.
With that his mind snapped and his heart gave out.
***
Belili rushed to the Citadel when she heard that Rahim had died. She was trying to comprehend the madness that was descending upon Verse Zero.
Hours ago she was contacted by the Elders of Adar. The Scholars had detected something. It was appearing in all their writings. There was some variable that was appearing and affecting all the Verses. They localized a nexus of this variable to one specific point in space and time.
Belili realized that it was a Verse where Patrick and Sarah were currently residing. She sent Joshua to find them.
Everything changed after that. The death of Patrick was a shock. Joshua had also been lost. There was some new factor that had entered their equation to save all that existed that had not been foreseen.
As she tried to organize all that she was learning she had been advised that Verse Zero had also lost Rahim. He was their greatest Scholar.
When Belili reached the Hall of Scholars she was led to Rahim’s chamber. She saw him lying on the floor. His eyes were wide. They were the eyes of a man who had seen something amazing and terrifying.
She examined the writing that he had left behind. When she saw it and a wave of awe washed over her. Some of it was illegible but some of it was unlike anything she had ever seen. On the parchment Rahim had left behind were some of the most advanced equations and calculations ever written. Belili’s mind could not fully comprehend what she was seeing but her intuition knew there was truth in it.
It would take their Librarians months if not longer to decipher it. A chill fell over Belili. For the first time in her life she was not sure if the island on the Sea of Glass would exist months from now.
She continued looking at Rahim’s writing. There was one place that required no translation. It was a script that was half written and trailed off. It was at the end of his characters and equations. It was two words. They read merely:
I see…
Belili looked down at her great prodigy. This was the last thing he had written as he died. She was chilled by the look in his eyes.
What had been that last thing he saw? she wondered.
***
The Philosophical Principles of Death. The Scripture of Farinata Uaegli Abertio.
Gospel 000008
I cannot remember the Sun.
It was a dream. I dreamt of light in the sky. I also dreamt of the moon. I dreamt I lived in a world of sunshine and moonlight when I was a boy.
I awoke from that dream. That was not me. That person would not recognize this person that I have become.
When the darkness came upon us and we were awoken from dreams of sunlight we were different people. We worked together.
We understood that all above had been lost. Life in the world above us had been wiped away in a short time.
In the early days after sunlight we wore fake costumes of false goodness.
Neighbor helped neighbor. Brother aided brother in survival.
But as the hours turned into days, and the days turned into weeks, as resources became scarce, neighbor became suspicious of neighbor. Brother became jealous of brother and coveted that which was not his.
Neighbors turned on neighbors. Brothers turned on brothers. Fathers turned on children.
Till all stood only for themselves. They killed to obtain that which they coveted. They became lustful of food and warmth.
It was in this time that our blessings began. God was blessing us to see truth and understanding. God was showing us the strong as he weeded out the weak.
Blessed is the wisdom of God.
The weak must be weeded out for the truly blessed ones to stand forth. The rulers of our city of eternal night are ordained by God.
Only in this isolation could we find truth of purity.
Verse Seventeen: Another Time, Another Place
Belili who lived in a city in the dark smiled. She smiled at the figure laying in the bed beside her. She had known this man well in life. Now she knew him in death. She had the privilege to know him intimately in both states of life and death.
She had been blessed to lay next to the corpse of one of the great ones after he died. He was one of the City’s greatest rulers. For the last forty years he was the City’s Governor. Because of the things that Belili’s generation had accomplished he was the last Governor the City would ever need.
The City itself once had a name but that name had long been forgotten to the ages. The denizens of this dark place merely referred to it as the City. It was the only City that mattered. All that existed was of the City or not of the City.
In the darkness of a funeral chamber Belili made love to the corpse of her Governor. Making love to the dead was a sacred honor.
In life the corpse beside her had shown cruelty which was immeasurable. He had been beloved for his desires of death. He had been the leader of their city in the dark. However, now they had a new leader. The one beside her, known as Holloran, had taken his life to make way for the final great leader of a city under a sea of ice. For his service to the people of the City, Holloran had received his blessed reward which was to step behind the curtain of death.
Belili looked into the dead eyes of the corpse who in life and death had been her lover. Belili kissed his cold lips one last time. She kissed them with passion.
She felt joy as she kissed his lips. All was coming together as it should. Blessed be the God of Creation and Death, Belili told herself.
She put on her robes and left the sacred chamber. She began descending the steps of the temple. She was going to a very special place now. She was going to the nursery below the temple.
This place was the jewel of their religion. It was their future. It was their end. She was going to the halls of the Children of Noctis. It was there that the perfect generation resided.
Belili reached the bottom of the staircase. There was a large steel door before her. She pushed it open and entered the chamber.
There was silence when she entered the hall. The room was not brightly lit. However, light was not needed by the child
ren in this place.
Belili carried with her a lantern as she walked through the hall. Beside her were rooms built of glass. She stopped in front of one of the rooms. She looked at the markings above the glass. The child in this room was designated as A71B. The children in the nursery were not given names. They were trained to understand that who they were was not about individuality. It was about the greater good.
The children in these rooms were perfect. They had been designed that way. The great minds of their civilization had focused on the brain. They had focused on shaping it to become more brilliant in their religious quest of death. They focused on building better minds by splicing brains together. The brains of the children in this nursery were composed of pieces of dark prodigies. Prodigies that understood malice and death. These minds understood the art in blood.
As she raised the lantern to the glass a shadow stepped forward. It did not lunge like an animal. These creatures were too well designed to get lost in their emotions. They were cold and callous. Belili studied the child in the low light. The child was four feet tall. Its fingers touched the glass that separated them.
Belili knew the fingers were more sensitive than the average hands of a human. The fingers of this child were like the antenna of insects. They creature could feel great detail in the glass it was touching. It could feel temperature variations through the glass. The fingers could also feel movement in the air around it.
Above the creature’s hand was the armor of the exoskeleton that was part of the child’s body. It shifted through colors that matched the child’s surroundings.
The scientists of Belili’s society had focused on the brain more so than the body. The body was cast off. The body was an imperfect and flawed thing.
Over time a better body was designed. For this the scientists looked to the greatest creatures in creation. They looked to creatures that evolution had designed to withstand various extremes. They looked to creatures that were abundant in their dark city.
They looked to insects.
There was much study done on insects and their structures. Their cells and tissues were studied. Over time bodies were grown from this science. Eventually the tiny insect brains where ripped out and replaced. They were replaced with the minds of genius children.
They called these creatures the Noctis. They were the perfect generation of death. The term noctis meant night in Latin. The beautiful creatures in this place had been genetically engineered and created to usher in the final twilight of existence.
The only recognizable human feature of these creatures other than the hands was the face. The face of the creatures was human. This perfect generation were human insect hybrids. The eyes however were segmented. They could see in different spectrums then human eyes.
The child before her stood patiently. It looked at her with it’s cold insect eyes. She wondered what brilliant thoughts went on behind those eyes. She knew they were brilliant thoughts of death. As she looked at the child before her Belili thought how blessed he was to be created in this manner. Around her more of the children were appearing at the edge of their glass cells.
As Belili stared at them she felt her heart swell with joy. They were the ones who would soon bring about the end of all there is. They were brilliantly designed killers. They were perfect prodigies.
They were shaped to what was needed for the people. They were trained to end the lives of others. In all the possible Universes there was always the possibility for an advanced race of killers.
They resided in Null Verse.
Belili took great pride in seeing these children. They were the perfection of generations. They needed no joy or pleasure. They were pure and blank. They were emotionless. They were the perfect instruments of death. They were human machines. They were the living abattoirs. The only thing that truly excited them was to end life.
They were so perfect that at times Belili felt a chill to be in their presence. It was close to fear. It was close to excitement. She knew that the children might simply kill her at any moment. They had done that to other teachers. However, this would be part of the perfection of them. If Belili had to die it was good to die at their hands.
As she walked amongst the children they observed her every movement. Even when their backs were turned towards her they followed her with their minds. In their minds they watched her every step. They had no tongues to complain. They merely felt, they saw, they heard, and with their brilliant minds they understood.
These children had been stitched together piece by piece. They were built from the madness of dark prodigies. They were genius killers. Their faces showed no hint of the cruelty that their minds dreamed.
These emotionless children were the future that was now becoming the present. They were the only future that was aspired too. As she walked amongst these children Belili began to laugh with joy.
She could not help herself. She had come to these chambers because she needed to be near the children.
She reached the end of the hall and stopped. She turned to one of the rooms. The child in this room was designated C982A. Belili opened the door to the child’s room and stepped inside.
She stood in the darkness of the room. She lifted her lantern. The child was on the ceiling. Its back fluttered when the light touched it.
Slowly the child climbed down the wall. It then positioned itself so it was standing on two legs. It stepped towards Belili.
The creature looked at her with its blank, gaunt, expressionless stare.
Belili reached her hand out. She softly petted the creature’s head. The creature turned his head slightly in acknowledgement. She enjoyed his wordless response.
***
In the streets of the great underwater city Dark Catalina stared at the temple that housed their servant of god.
The city itself existed under a great glass dome that contained the atmosphere where the city’s denizens lived.
There was very little light in the city. There had not been much light for centuries. The power that was created by the thermal vents from the planets core was used for other more vital resources which sustained the city.
As Dark Catalina stared at the Temple of their God her eyes showed a steel coldness. She could not deny that she felt a sense of jealousy gazing at the temple. Dark Catalina at one time had been thought of as the great one that the Order of the Dao had sought. For a time they believed she may be the Messiah.
Catalina was one of the Prekoraciti. She could fold the two points of the tunnels that connected Verses and make them one point. She could then step physically through them. The Prekoraciti were of great importance to the people of Null Verse. They did not have a Sea of Glass sailing through infinity that touched different Verses. Instead they needed to sustain their cause by physically going to different Verses and bringing prodigies back with them.
Among the Prekoraciti throughout the history of Null Verse, Dark Catalina was uniquely gifted. She had the ability to pull several people through the Multiverse at once. Even the feeble one known as Joshua from the awful city of glass could not do that. He could only fold the tunnels so that Verses existed briefly in the same time and space. When he moved physically into Verses he could only take one or two people back with him to his Sea of Glass.
Because of this ability, for a time, the Order of the Dao thought that Catalina might be the great prodigy they sought.
This was not the case however. Catalina could not locate the Threshold no matter how much she tried. She was almost perfect.
However, close to perfection falls so very short of it, she mused.
The people of the dark city initially found her as a child in another time and another place. A Prekoraciti crept into her father’s house at night and took her. He took her to his dark city and as her gifts became apparent the people of Null Verse worshiped her. They groomed her. From a young age she was raised to be a perfect assassin. The insect bodies had not yet been perfected so Dark Catalina was the last generation of chil
d prodigies who lived in their imperfect human form.
Over time Dark Catalina’s lust for blood became unparalleled. She thirsted for it. She loved the warmth of it. She used her genius with her blades. She liked scalpels and razors the most. They were tools used for precision. Heavy blades were for barbarians. Scalpels and razors were for artist.
In her hands Catalina created art. From a young age she learned thousands of ways to kill. She was a perfect weapon and she truly delighted in death.
As a child she would physically step into Verses and there she would hunt and kill at whim. Over time she learned to step into the bodies of her other selves. In these Verses she took the lives of those other selves down new paths of death and desecration.
Eventually she took her love of death to new levels. As she learned to pierce into other worlds more regularly she would play various games. She stepped into alternate lives and took control of them. In these Verses sometimes she was the murderer. Sometimes she was the manipulator of the murderers.
She was beautiful in all the worlds and lives she jumped into. In the beginning she would lure men to their death. She would seduce them. However, she tired of this rather quickly. Men and in some cases women were easy to seduce. She wanted something more interesting to amuse herself. She wanted to hone different skills. This is when she began to manipulate. It gave her great joy. She would manipulate others into killing for her.
There were many ways to do this in the millions of possible lives out there. Sometimes she would promise people love. She would promise them forever. She could be theirs if they just eliminated an obstacle. She loved to make them think it was their choice. She loved to make them think it was their decision. She made wicked men commit atrocities. However, what she loved most was to make good men kill. She would tell them she was beaten or abused. She would weep in their arms. She would watch the swell of righteous indignation in them. She thirsted for this and loved this.
Prisons of Stolen Dreams Page 25