by B.J. Keeton
***
By shuttle, Ennd’s and Ternia were considered close. By foot, Ternia was a long way from Ennd’s.
Even though their climates were nearly identical—temperate, green, and consistently lovely—Ennd’s Academy rested clear across the world from Damien and Ceril's home.
Travel had taken nearly two weeks: Damien hitched a ride on a Skylane transport freighter for a while, and then he walked a bit—a few hours or days, depending—slept when he could, and then repeated the whole process until he finally made it to the school.
The trip could have been easier and faster, but the old man had done his best to avoid mass-transit. With someone actively seeking him, he thought that it would be best to be inconspicuous.
He had hitched a ride for the last leg of the journey with a farmer who had been kind enough to refill Damien’s satchel with the best Balsi-fruit he had tasted in years.
“Thank you,” Damien said as the driver sat the air-freighter down in front of the school. “I really appreciate the ride.” He patted his sack. “And the fruit.”
“Nah, it's nothin, Gramps,” the driver said. Damien had not used his real name in a long time, and he still looked old enough to go by the name Ceril was most fond of. “I just hope your grandson's okay. When a kid gets something that even pseira meds can't fix, I reckon there's a real reason to travel to see him. Give him my best, will ya?”
“I certainly will,” Damien said with a smile on his face. He bit into the fruit he was carrying, and he said, “Thanks again, Curt. I'll pay you back for these eventually.”
“You do that,” Curt said, and Damien shut the door to the truck.
Both men threw up their hands, and the truck lifted off the ground and sped away. Such a nice guy, Damien thought as he turned around and saw Ennd's Academy rise in front of him. He had to admit to himself that Ennd's was still an engineering marvel. In the bright sunlight, the dozens of crystalline spires sparkled like candles on top of a birthday cake. The body of the building was fairly squat, with terraces circling the entire structure at different levels. At the center rose a single tower, higher than any of the other spires and much, much wider.
Damien remembered when he had built the school. The ground it sat on was empty plains back then.
When most people had only just begun their exploration out of Erlon’s habitable zones, Damien and his Charons were already creating new universes. He remembered being shunned by the religious leaders, and in turn, most of the population. They claimed the Charons were blasphemers and heretics, and the situation was only escalating. There hadn’t been any violence yet, but it was inevitable that there would be. So the order needed a headquarters, a place where they could work and research in relative safety. They could have found haven in an Instance, but their work was so tied to the high-yield energy pockets all across Erlon. While they were capable of creating their own universe to live and work in, they wouldn’t have had the same success there that they had in Erlon
Hope came when initial surveys of a section of the Uncharted Wastes turned up a massive energy pocket—unstable, but possessing the highest energy yield they had ever discovered. Damien and a handful of his closest colleagues spent months journeying to it.
These were the days well before the Blood Rites and internal nanites, before Damien would have near-total control over his molecular structure. That technology would come later, after centuries of research at Ennd’s. Back then, the Charons all wore sleeves of nanites under their clothes. This technology, now treated like training wheels for Apprentices preparing for the Blood Rites, had once been the pinnacle of science on Erlon.
Damien Vennar stood in front of Ennd’s Academy and let the memory of being a much younger man wash over him. He closed his eyes, and he could still feel how his nanite sleeve had reacted to the energy pocket as he had walked into the plain. Damien planted his feet—his body in one time, his mind in another—in the exact location he had ten thousand years ago.
He had been the only one who could withstand the pressure. His colleagues fainted immediately. They were unable to push against the pressure emanating from the ground, the pressure that was magnified by their nanites’ reaction to it.
But Damien had kept walking toward the energy pocket. His nanites began to move without any instruction from him. The machines would listen to his suggestions when he made them, but he let them work on their own for a while.
The microscopic robots had originally been programmed to replicate only when one had been lost. They would draw energy and physical material from either the Charon's body or the surrounding environment to produce a replacement for the lost machine.
That was their original program.
What Damien Vennar had experienced on this plain was magnificent and beyond anything he had imagined possible. The tiny machines rushed from his body toward the source of the energy that excited them. None were lost, but they replicated as they surged away from Damien. They maintained physical contact with him and created a bridge between the energy pocket and his mind.
The nanites flew toward the energy storm below ground, and that's when Damien knew what he could do. What he had to do.
He stood tethered to the ground by the nanites burrowing deep within the ground. Time stood still for Damien; his colleagues remained unconscious. He fully exerted his power, pushing himself past any established human boundary. He went well into what he would have considered godhood before. Creating a universe was easy; he had created dozens of Instances, and they had never filled him with a feeling like this.
This was divinity. This was apotheosis.
One by one, a dozen crystalline spires emerged from the earth, tinted only by the refraction of the sunlight that hit them. They rose from the ground as liquid, but became solid as the nanites continued to pack themselves on top of one another, microscopic layer upon layer.
Damien laughed as the energy beneath the soil empowered him. He commanded the nanites to replicate faster, more efficiently. They did.
In his mind, Damien Vennar saw the end result of this construction. He saw a palace surrounding a single tower that reached upward, more majestic than anything ever before constructed on Erlon. He could see the footprint of the building, and its interior corridors. He saw his fortress in his imagination, and the surging nanites made every detail of his fantasy a reality. Every hall, every door, every tower poured upward from the ground and solidified into the haven he and his Charons had been searching for.
He had no idea how long it took to build. From then on, time meant nothing to Damien, and eventually he was finished.
He stood a few hundred meters away from his creation. He could see gardens that were already blooming on the terraces. He had not just created this fortress, this haven and sanctuary—he had created life. He embraced the rush of nanites as they came back to him from the storm of energy below. Their work was finished for now.
Not long afterward, his colleagues regained consciousness, and they walked up behind him. Damien could feel their nanites pulse with the energy from the pocket beneath them, eager to experience what his already had. It was a new sensation, feeling another person’s nanosleeve. Damien liked it, but said nothing. The other Charons were awed by what he had accomplished, what they had known to be impossible just hours (or had it been days? weeks?) before. They were at a loss for words.
“Welcome home,” Damien had said to them.
His mind snapped back to the present, and he heard himself speak those same words again. They seemed strangely appropriate now, too. A lot had changed since he had Conjured it out of nothingness, but still, it felt familiar. Damien knew that once he was inside, he would have little trouble finding his way to the Headmaster's Office. It would still be locked away in its own Instance via the Library. There was only one portal on the grounds, after all.
The campus was bustling with students and faculty making use of the various gardens and terraces as they enjoyed the be
autiful day outside. The twin suns beamed along the building’s crystalline exterior, which made the whole building glow in a hundred different colors. It really was a beautiful sight. He admired his handiwork as he climbed the shimmering stairs that led to the front door. No one seemed to notice him; one lonely old man in a sea of crotchety professors was probably not going to get anyone’s attention.
Damien finished his fruit, secured the rest in his satchel for later, and walked directly into the front door of Ennd's Academy for the first time in over four hundred years.