Sanctuary

by Chris Fox

  It spit me right back out.

  Turning to ice and being absorbed had been terrifying, but I didn’t die. I merged with Hotep, and became part of the god. Part of the magic. I tumbled through his mind, rolling along synapses, and then landed squarely in a memory.

  I became Hotep.

  Jerek faded to a mere buzzing.

  I stood in The City. There was only one, of course, the divine construct from which the first pantheon had come together to end the wars.

  As a water god I’d found myself a servant of greater powers, gathered under the primal banner as something momentous was to be decided.

  Reality crystalized, as it often does in dreams and memories. The room filled in around me, and I could finally glimpse the city in all its majesty. Golden fluted towers rose all around me, and hundreds of gods prowled the corridors of the first, and only, metropolis.

  Combat was not permitted here, in Reevanthara’s creation. This was a place of learning, and Ohm had decreed that no violence be done, blessing its favored son’s work. No life be taken. No god consumed. This place existed to create, and foster, and nurture. To discuss, and resolve.

  The whole of the rest of the universe was a battlefield, but in this place they were allies. Today that spirit of cooperation would finally bear fruit. I would play a tiny role in the creation of this new Cycle, which would allow our offspring to propagate, and to eventually eclipse their creators.

  Reevanthara, the mighty smith, had been the voice that had offered the suggestion. He’d come to the demons, and the seraphim, and the ethereals, and the unliving. He’d come to the Djinn, and the Marid, and the Ifrit, and the Shayatin.

  He’d even come to the enemy of them all, the implacable Wyrms.

  Every power in creation had been approached, though not every member of every faction. Looking around the city at the gathering Reevanthara had orchestrated I saw the best and brightest, and no more. Many of the more powerful gods and titans were missing.

  Why?

  Hotep wondered, and I wondered, and for a moment I was Jerek, but then he buzzed away and Hotep focused on Reevanthara, as the bearded earthen explained his plan.

  “Today we decide the fate of creation.” Reevanthara raised a silvered hammer, which I knew he’d received directly from Ohm itself. “If we pool our ability, our will, our magic, and our divinity. If we focus it through the lens that this city has created, then we can create something greater than any god has yet made. And before we begin, know that Ohm has already blessed my vision.”

  He spun in a slow circle, his enthusiasm infectious. Creation was everything to gods, and we were caught up in it. Caught up in his passion, and his hubris.

  His mind spun out visions for us, showing what he intended to create. A Great Cycle, which would refine and amplify all magic and life in the universe. Creating new species would be far easier, and for the first time they’d be self-sustaining. They could breed true, and reproduce without being directly forged or birthed by a god.

  The concept was alien, progeny creating progeny, but the assembled gods quickly warmed to it. It meant that your children could become more, and their children still more. It meant we could allow them to grow, and learn, and then bask in their worship. Our own power would grow, that was central to the idea. We would all gain worshipers by the billions, putting us above other pantheons.

  “What is the cost?” I remember calling. The gathering turned to me, every god caught in hedonism, but some now pulling back, and wondering as I did. They knew me as a fair god, and one who deliberated long before deciding anything. “This Great Cycle will require nearly all the magic, and all the light, and all the life, and all the matter. What becomes of that which exists now?”

  “That isn’t our concern,” Reevanthara assured us with that charismatic smile, the one that lured so many of us to folly. “Their worlds will still exist. It’s true that we will steal the light from their reality. All light. All stars. All natural heat. But they will be left with their own divinity, and they can simply create new stars, and new worlds, and new children.”

  “So you are stealing the light from the universe,” Xalegos called, the scholarly demon frowning at Reevanthara. “We will live, and thrive, and prosper, but they will be trapped in the frigid void. All who dwell there now, all locked in their endless wars, will suddenly put aside their hatred and come for us. What is your plan to stop them from destroying this Cycle? Even if we succeed, what we create will be fragile, and we will not be able to protect it from every deity we have excluded today. We are declaring war, make no mistake.”

  “That is the beauty of my design!” Reevanthara damned us all with his honeyed words. I believed them to my core, and offered myself fully to the plan. “The crystal shell around the Cycle repels the void. Creatures from the void cannot pass it.” The earthen extended a hand, and showed a handful of salt crystals. “A thick barrier will protect us, that and hiding the location. Creating the Cycle will also create a sort of ‘echo’. A reality outside our own that is ever shifting, the mirrored possibilities of anything that might be, all out there somewhere. Past those echoes will lie what we currently consider to be creation. What we will, in one master stroke, cast into darkness. We will rob them of all light, and all magic, and because we have those things they will be trapped there, underneath the echoing realities. To reach us they would first have to breach the echo reality, and it will be anathema to them. They cannot survive there. I have engineered it so.”

  “And if they do reach this echoed reality, and somehow survive, or coerce the natives of these places?” Xalegos protested. Xal, the only sane member of our pantheon, the only one not blinded by lust for power. “Can they reach this ‘outer shell’? Because if it can be done, then eventually it will.”

  “They can.” Reevanthara nodded. “Every echo, every galaxy, possesses a gateway. At the heart of matter and gravity lies an inhospitable singularity. Entering that singularity will provide entrance to the Cycle, but doing so will require them to survive the titanic stresses surrounding the gateway, and once there they will need to contend with the shell. Trust me when I say…we will be completely safe, so long as we do not allow a breach in the shell. That can only be created internally, and none of us are fool enough to damage the Cycle itself.”

  I accepted those words, and even felt joy that all the vicious war gods would be excluded from our paradise, that the worst of us would be abandoned to an obsolete reality. I did not know the cost. I did not realize that in trapping the denizens, and in the creation of the Umbral Depths, we were creating the seeds of our own destruction.

  The memory faded in clarity. I sensed memories of the Cycle being created, of inhabiting it, and creating offspring. Of learning, and growing, and joy. But I couldn’t hold onto it. The memories slid from my mind like water from a leaky bucket, and then I became the water being leaked. I sprawled onto a hard surface in a shower of frigid water, and wondered what the depths was happening.

  I coughed repeatedly as my lungs fought to expel liquid, and fell forward onto my hands and knees as clarity danced just out of my reach. I lay there shaking, gradually aware that I wasn’t alone. A group of Marid supplicants stared down at me in concern, but none were my friends.

  “Jer?” Miri’s surprised voice came from behind me, and I blinked weakly up in the direction of the voice. “My gods. You’re alive. We’d given up. It’s been a week.”

  I wanted to ask her why she was still here then, if they’d thought I was dead. The words died in my mouth as I spotted the white-blue egg behind her, near the edge of the platform. It was larger than Briff, but the same color as his scales, and pulsing as the cocoon accelerated whatever metamorphosis happened within.

  Briff had begun his first molt. Somehow, despite not being a full century old, he’d become a full Wyrm. Or would soon anyway.

  I sagged back on my knees, and then lay down. If he got to take a nap, so did I.

  19

  I woke again a few
minutes later, still bedraggled, but in a sitting position with my back against Miri, who had her back against Briff’s cocoon. She’d been combing the hair out of my eyes, and peered down at me as if fearing I’d expire any moment.

  A cough tightened my chest, and I rolled off of her, then burped up a bunch more of…the god brain I guess? I rose shakily, and wiped my mouth as my eyes watered. “Bet I’m super attractive right now. So what did I miss?”

  I remembered that Visala said all Briff was lacking was a source of magic, and realized he must have touched the Catalyst after I’d entered. If it had infused him with water, as the other supplicants I’d seen, then perhaps that had pushed him over whatever threshold he’d needed.

  “Did you touch it?” I nodded behind me at mega-water-brain.

  “Yeah.” She raised a hand and ice pooled in her palm. “Your sister refused to go near it, and retreated back to the inn. She hasn’t left since you went in. Seket touched it as well, and gained water magic. He’s down caring for your sister. I’ve been watching Briff. Saho seemed to lose interest after you vanished, and left. I think we’re on our own. The Marid don’t seem to care that we’re here. No one’s asked that we leave, at least.”

  I nodded as I processed all that. At least we weren’t on a timer. I raised a hand to my forehead as I thought about my father’s shade. I could still feel Utred in there, though I forgot about him most of the time now. Had he been along for the ride during my vision?

  Speaking of, that vision needed some serious unpacking.

  “Jerek, where were you?” Miri waved a hand before my face to get my attention. “You still seem out of it.”

  “I was in the mind of a god, I think.” I held my hands out and attempted to summon water. I really wanted to try it out. Nothing happened. I stared down at my all too dry palms. “Did you have any trouble using your magic?”

  “No, it manifested right away. Maybe you got something else?”

  I probed the magic in my chest, and found a new layer, the deep blue of water. Yet the signature wasn’t like the other magic. This was crystalized into a single form, a complex sigil, comprised of millions of tiny sub-sigils. It afforded one ability. I closed my eyes and concentrated on it.

  “Greater Purify.” I realized with a frustrated sigh. “I can cleanse diseases, and sickness, and curses and the like. I mean…it’s cool, but…water magic.” So much for learning the greater path of healing. Now I knew how Rava felt when she’d gotten an appearance increase instead of the magic she’d wanted.

  Who decided? Why give me this ability? I wish I understood Hotep’s mind.

  “That sounds useful,” Miri offered lamely.

  “I mean…I can cure anything. That’s pretty cool.” It wasn’t though. I turned to Briff, and tried to take my mind off things. “I don’t know how, but man it will be cool having a full dragon on our side. I can’t believe it.”

  “Saho says he’ll wake today. Soon.” Miri gave a sudden relieved smile, and it made her artificial beauty into something irresistibly natural. “We also got word from the Remora. Siwit is alive. Well…Siwit’s not alive. He died and became a wraith, I guess. He’s in the body of a Djinn. I don’t want to think about what he had to do to get it.”

  Neither did I, but I did anyway. He’d probably ejected or shackled the existing soul, and while he’d been honorable so far I had to remind myself that there could be a reason the Marid didn’t trust necromancers. I could cross that bridge later.

  “Is he coming to join us or staying with the ship?”

  “With the ship.” Miri reached into her pack and offered me a metal thermos. “I’ve got coffee if you want some.”

  “You are even more beautiful when you are giving me caffeine.” I took the thermos, unscrewed the top, and finally rejoined the land of the living.

  As if on cue the cocoon thrummed behind me, and a crack appeared, as wings began to unfold. They were much, much larger than they had been before, and as Briff stood, I beheld the Wyrm version of my lifelong friend.

  “Jer!” The adult dragon craned a now longer neck down in my direction. “You’re alive! I was so worried. I kept having nightmares.”

  “You’re a dragon” I gestured at him incredulously. “Can you like, explain?”

  Briff’s now mighty wings drooped. “I, ah, lied to you. I said I was twenty-six when we met, but really…I was a hundred and twenty six. I’m sorry, Jer, but…I was a failure, you know? I should have molted when I was a hundred, and when I didn’t. I sort of…gave up on everything.”

  “I don’t judge, man.” I rested my hand on his massive leg. “I’m proud of you. I saw what you went through to get here. And we’re thrilled to have a dragon on our team.”

  “I’m really a heavy now.” Briff’s smile grew impossibly wide. “And I can feel the water magic! Did you get it too?”

  “No.” I tried not to sound bitter, but failed. “If you get a rash, I’m your man though.”

  “Oh.” Briff fluffed his wings awkwardly. “I’m kind of…big now. I wonder if I’ll fit in the ship.”

  That punched me in the gut. I hadn’t learned anything in there that would tell me how to fix the ship. We were still stuck here.

  Were we though? It occurred to me that I’d seen the first city. I’d understood it as Hotep had understood it. Was the answer right there? Had I seen or learned something in the vision that could grant entry to the city?

  What did I know about it?

  “He’s got that far-off look,” Miri murmured. “Let’s let him think.”

  Sanctuary existed in all realities, outside the Great Cycle, and apparently outside the place that had become the Umbral Depths. How messed up was that, by the way? The idea that the Umbral Depths existed because a group of gods had literally stolen light itself.

  Anyway, the city could be reached from anywhere. Which meant it could be reached from where I was standing. The Great Cycle, as described in my vision, had a physical point of entry. Sanctuary was more a…state of being. To get inside I had to find a way to sync with it. Before I did that, though, I needed to take stock of my friends.

  I had to make sure Rava was okay, and that everyone was ready to move out. If getting to the city required attaining a sort of enlightenment, as I feared it did, then what if only one or some of us made it? I needed to make sure that anyone left behind was seen to before we tried it, and that they understood what I was attempting.

  At no point in the vision had I seen a way to leave the city, and as gods could translocate maybe the designers hadn’t built that function in. I doubted it though. Utred wanted something in that city, and wanted to leave with it afterwards. I didn’t know how he planned to do that, but wagered my fate that there would be some way to get back.

  “Let’s get you down to the inn, Briff. I don’t suppose you want to, like, fly us down?” I tried to suppress the hope. I’d always wanted to ride a dragon, but hadn’t done it since I’d been in fourth grade, and Briff had been the dragon then too.

  “Course man. We’ve been waiting forever for this!” He lowered a wing, and I scrambled up with a grin. Some of the sting went out of the crappy ability I’d gotten from the Catalyst. “Let’s get down to the inn and celebrate. We’re all alive, even Siwit. Well he’s alive-adjacent. Anyway, we deserve a minute for some hangover-free drinks.”

  Miri clambered up behind me, and Briff leapt into flight. We soared down the pathway, a good four or five meters over the supplicants on the trail, who gaped up at us. Some cowered in fear, and Briff gave a giggle like an engine revving. Faster and faster we fell, and Briff guided us in minutes down what had taken hours to walk.

  Before I knew it we were landing at the cave entrance. Briff wriggled through, his bulk a tight fit, and then we scrambled after him.

  There was the inn, full of light and merriment. We’d survived the Catalyst, and I thought that just maybe I’d found my answer in there. I threw my arm around Miri, and we sprinted up to the party.

  Inte
rlude IX

  The Devourer of Names translocated to her new trade moon, the seat of her power during the coming battle. She appeared in the office of the chief administrator, effectively the ruler of an entire artificial planet. The office was occupied by one of her newest puppets, an interesting woman who shared genetic lineage with their family, and who had always craved this very office, apparently.

  Her new servant descended from Inura, and bore the stink of life, as the Devourer once had. At least the woman’s body had been properly improved. She now possessed a spirit lens in the place of an eye, and an arachnid harness, with its eight dragon-claw legs. Gone were the useless limbs she’d been born with.

  “Mistress.” Her servant performed a low bow. “I did not expect you. Please, how may I serve?”

  The woman bore all the signs of a broken monarch. One used to ruling with power, who understood the niceties, and just how exacting a mistress could be, because they had been a mistress themselves. They made the best servants.

  “What is your name?” the Devourer demanded, as she did at every meeting. She hadn’t taken this one yet, but each time a person intoned their own true name aloud she had the opportunity. Perhaps this time she would devour her pet.

  “Jolene.” The woman cringed backwards on her harness, the rank stench of fear flooding the room. “Have I displeased you, mistress? I have done all you asked. The moon is efficiently run, and we’ve retrofitted all surface factories. Your army has exceeded quotas, mistress. Our fleet stands ready for deployment. The Tri-Cannon will fire. Please do not punish me.”

  “You think I seek to punish you?” The Devourer wondered at her own demeanor. Was she so terrifying? How wonderful. “You are an able tool…Jolene.” She savored the name. She would enjoy this one, eventually. “Is all prepared for the assault on the Confederacy?”