by Marc Watson
Aryu was stone cold. His eyes widened, his breath stopped, and every muscle in his young body seized. The peace he felt in this place was erased instantly. He couldn’t draw his sword. He could barely remain conscious.
Crystal was familiar with different machines from the ages, with this one looking like a holdover from the last time mankind had dabbled in something so advanced. This was more than some dumb robot. This was what the Echoes spoke of.
Sho regained his footing as the machine began towards them.
“Hold there, Sho!” Nixon called when they were thirty or so paces away. “Keep that damned thing where it is and step away NOW!”
With the air echoing his words, Sho looked at Nixon with a sense of wonder, almost questioning at the request. “What do you think I’ve been DOING! Back off! Get away! Something is wrong!” he answered in a rage. Even from this distance, Aryu could see that Sho was not himself.
The Herald raised its hands and stopped, now with what looked to be an Ark 1 pointed at Sho. Like something from Aryu’s worst nightmares, that overly pleasant and professional voice had returned, and this time it was armed. “Please, stop. Or I’ll do to them what I did to you, Sho. Just a few words. I bring a message for the one named Crystal.”
“No words! Send it away now Sho, or so help me I’ll cut it t’ quarters with or without you in tha way!”
Sho could only look back at Nixon bewildered, as if he was frozen in place. Something serious was stopping him from helping.
Aryu swore he was about to cry.
“Damn it, Sho!” The ground trembled with the words, and Aryu could feel the heat emanate from Nixon. He had no doubt that smoke would form on his skin at any moment. “That thing destroyed a village of honest innocent people for no reason! THAT is what destroyed Tan Torna Qu-ay!”
“Untrue,” it spoke again. “That unit was dispatched by you, Nixon of the Great Fire and Ash.”
The voice! Dear gods, that voice was going to put Aryu over the edge! He began crying instantly and fell to his knees. The unbelievable pleasantness was a sound he’d never forget for all his days.
Nixon was taken aback by the thing’s use of his full, God-given title. It was his name the other had said in the village as he cleaved it into pieces. Whoever they were, they knew him.
“Yes, yes we know you,” is said, reading the obvious faltering in the large man. “You are known to us very well, as is Aryu O’Lung’Singh.” Aryu openly vomited at the mention of his name, the illness far too much to take. “As our previous attempt to secure you went…” The clicking again. The terrible, soft clicking of its deeper thought process. “…poorly, we have decided on another tactic. One of open dialogue.”
“How do ya know me, creature?” Nixon took the chance to get at least one answer before he used his considerable abilities to bring the Herald down. “What do you and yer people know of me?”
“Simple. We know all those whose natural abilities extend beyond the…” click click clickclick “…normal human range. We admit you are an anomaly, but essentially you fall into this category. We also know of Crystal, keeper of the Dragon Spirit, one of the oldest humans alive, born February 29th in the Gregorian year 2036 AD, lover of the one known as Tokugawa Ryu…”
“Yes, thank you,” Crystal said, obviously annoyed. “I know who I am.”
“Our knowing these things is inconsequential at the moment. The point is we do, and it’s information we can use to our advantage.”
“Well now,” said Nixon, his gaze unwavering from the non-face of the machine, “I would say it would be wise not t' threaten tha one with tha big fuckin’ sword, which is proven t' dispatch you and yer kind with little effort, thank ya very much. Now, as t' yer knowin' these things, I’d say we don’t think it’s so inconsequential. How do ya know?”
“Fine,” it said, mock exasperation in its words. Another oddity of human speech from a non-human body. “During our dormancy, select models were sent out at random times to collect information on any and all peoples who may cause us…” clickclick click “…inconvenience upon our reactivation. We were created to be war machines, sir, and knowledge of the abilities of both friend and enemy is a wise device to use in times of conflict, would you not agree?” Nixon said nothing, letting it continue. “Regardless, despite a general guarded nature of those we speak of, given enough time and the proper resources, information can be found in great number with relative ease, even on one as elusive as yourself.
“Humans are notorious documenters, with chronicles that can be found dating back millennia, should one know where to look. From these times we found more than enough to count, calculate, and record information on every living…” click clicliclick “…well, we call you Ethereal Beings. However, I’m sure everyone who has known you has some different kind of descriptor or another. Beings who have evolved beyond the natural classification of human.”
Nixon said nothing of his not actually being one of the things it was describing. Although they knew far too much about him for his liking, they didn’t know everything.
“We even have very detailed information on these places such as the one we are currently encased. ‘Havens’ as you say, Mr. Ash. All this information coupled with our leader’s wealth of knowledge has given us great insight into your kind. We admit you are more of an enigma than we are accustomed to, which is the main purpose of our desire to obtain and detain you and your young winged friend.”
“Ya want us t' go with ya?”
“More to the point, I need you to. This isn’t going to be a failed mission. Tan Torna Qu-ay was regrettable, but we have learned and are not about to fail again.”
“And wha' if I told ya t' get up on yer lit'le rocket feet and fly yerself straight t' Hell? What’d ya do then?”
The mention of his home had caused Aryu to vomit again, though no one had noticed. Now he could only listen as this robotic devil described with that annoying voice the confidence it had its new mission would be a success.
“Your reputation for belligerence precedes you. Despite your great abilities, and that of two of your three companions, we will take you by force.”
“Another bomb, perhaps?”
“No, nothing so destructive. The natural resources of this land are far too valuable for such a messy solution. Besides, I doubt I’d have the ability to send the order from this place. I lost contact with HOME as soon as I entered into these lands.”
“I don’t allow any kind of mechanical signal here,” Sho said quickly, looking to move the conversation on.
Its spinning blue eyes locked onto Sho. “You, sir, could be very annoying in any other setting.”
It turned back to the trio. “Are you certain you will not accompany me back to HOME? Much time and pain can be spared if you do.”
Nixon bristled. “I’m afraid I must decline, on behalf of myself and my charge, thank ya.”
Sho looked at the phoenix. “Easy, Nixon, don’t antagonize this thing…” Nixon looked at him like he was a fool, but Aryu saw that there was something Sho knew. Something that scared him.
“So be it. A large contingent of ground forces will be arriving shortly. Only your cooperation could have called them off. As it is, they will arrive shortly to apprehend you. Why must you be so defiant? So much loss for no reason.”
Crystal looked both amused and defiant. “You must know that any army, even one as powerful as yours, doesn’t stand much of a chance against one of us, let alone three. I don’t think I feel like letting them in here, either. They’d spoil the view. It’s bad enough you snuck in like you did,” she said, her face no longer that of a child but more of the grown and serious woman she was.
“Too true, but you and your friends’ abilities rely on command of what you simply call the Power, a focusing of the mind beyond levels the average human can obtain. Previously referred to in history as many things: magic, chi, miracles, faith, noetics, or telekinesis. Everything is rooted in the fact that your brains became advanced
enough to understand standard scientific particle physics and the quantum field on an intimate level.
“You are also still human. A collection of natural base elements and electrical impulses no different than myself or any other machine at your most basic. It is a weakness no matter how you defend it.”
No one alive could have seen the motion of two small, cylindrical tubes that emerged from the body of the Herald just below the shoulders. They all heard something pop.
Nixon was the first to react, followed by Sho who charged the spot where the Herald had been, diving out of the way of an Ark 1 shot that exploded the ground like a mine, but not before it deftly jumped away. The whole scene played out in an instant, a blur to Aryu’s eyes. He was surprised to see Sho react so slowly compared to the astonishing speed he’d shown the night before. Sho brought around the bladed shield but was nowhere near his target.
Crystal did nothing, simply raising her hands to her face and looking at them questioningly.
Nixon gave chase instantly, bounding across the grassy meadow to the thing, closing the gap just enough to grab hold of its arm before it leaped off again.
The force of its leap coupled with Nixon’s iron grip caused it to tear its own arm off as a child would an insect wing. The reaction from the Herald was exactly what Aryu remembered from before. The robotic, twisted scream that followed as it landed with an awkward ‘thud’ only a few paces away was pitch for pitch the same as the one from Tan Torna Qu-ay. Right down to the length of the sound.
Nixon was on it instantly, mighty sword in hand and ready to finish this bold creature before it could cause any more damage. “WAIT!” shouted Crystal, startling Aryu with her volume. “Wait, Nixon!”
Nixon held off, bringing the blade to a stop just before he would have connected with the machine’s non-face. He turned to her, eyes blazing in fury, with a look of both rage and total confusion. He was not accustomed to being stopped.
Crystal ignored him and immediately approached the fallen robot. “What have you done to me?” she asked, to Aryu’s extreme confusion. “What did you do!”
The thing, fallen and at the mercy of the three most powerful beings alive, could only begin to laugh, a terrifying sound coming from a mechanical body with no mouth or face to speak of. “We evened the odds, Crystal Kokuou. Look about you. Your mighty Power is failing as we speak!” The laughter continued unstopped as the four looked at what it was referring to.
Aryu saw the disorientating image of the world around him as it became hazy, like opening his eyes underwater. In a matter of seconds, the startling beauty of the meadow in the foothills was replaced with a bland collection of rocks and scrub grasses, still ringed by trees, but in a circle far less impressive to look at. To the right of where they all stood Aryu could barely make out the image of a large, circular rock wall, now crumbled and aged. It appeared to be the base of what was once a very large and impressive building that was likely the aforementioned tower Crystal had once lived in.
Crystal was back to looking at the thing on the ground, her red eyes demanding a more direct answer to her previous question, rage and fear written across every inch of her face.
The laughter stopped like a switch had been turned off, sharp and abrupt. “As I said, humans even as powerful as you are at their core the same. Elements and electrical impulses. Our solution is a simple one. We have injected you with a solution designed to impede the signals of your brain that have command of the ability to access the deeper natural order of the universe. I have turned off the part of the brain that allows you to tap the Power. You are as you once were. Frail, weak and ready to be destroyed.”
“TURN ME BACK!” Aryu jumped back at the level of emotion Crystal displayed. She was beyond enraged. She was on another level of emotion altogether, and it was terrifying to see.
“Don’t be foolish; why would they send me, knowing you were obviously going to trap or destroy me, with anything useful to reverse the process?” The laughter started again, followed by the immediate dispatching of the Herald by Nixon, who believed he had waited long enough as it was. His sword came down with a force that not only divided their unwanted guest but also drove the blade into the ground below where it was resting, making the earth shake with the force. The laughter stopped.
That was when Crystal began screaming at the top of her lungs, arms thrust upwards as she did so, madness etched into her eyes.
-----------------------
Aryu could barely stand it. The madness into which Crystal had apparently descended was terrifying and deep. Sho, a look of both confusion and worry in his eyes, seemed to collect himself enough to usher Aryu over to the crumbled rock wall and allow them both to take a seat while Nixon tended to Crystal, trying to calm her as best he could.
The dizzying queasiness Aryu felt was still there, but each fresh wretch brought nothing, his stomach empty after the second round.
Sho brought Aryu an old cup filled with water from the stream. The stream was still there, flowing as peacefully as before, but everything else had changed all around them, and a sudden feeling of helplessness and desperation was in the air.
Aryu drank the cold water, the shiver of the drink on him at once.
“Is it true?” he asked after a moment. “Have you lost the command of the Power?”
Sho nodded. “So it would seem. That thing dropped from the sky and ambushed me before I could react, doing to me what it did to my mother in the process just before I made it here. Then it followed as I tried to battle into the Haven. I can’t feel anything around me like I could before. The life of this place escapes me.”
“What about the trees and animals? Don’t you maintain it? Why hasn’t it begun to disappear like the Haven did?”
“I keep the peace here with a mixture of my own abilities and the natural essence of the planet. As time has gone on, the Earth maintains more and more of the order of things here, needing less and less of my interference. I simply travel around to bolster the spots that have weakened. This land will be alright for a time, but it will eventually fail to the forces that would destroy it.”
“How? How can it know how to stop your control of the Power? What did it do?”
Sho reached into a small storage pocket tucked behind a gap in his armor, producing his hand and showing what appeared to Aryu to be an empty palm.
Aryu’s confusion at the gesture was obvious. “Look closer,” asked Sho, indicating the center of his hand.
Once closer, Aryu could see what appeared to be a small, perfectly straight hair, barely noticeable in such a large hand. “What is it? They didn’t do this with a hair did they?”
“No,” Sho said, “not a hair. it's ridged and the end is feathered. It seems to be a small dart.”
Aryu quickly began looking himself over, trying to find an errant hair-sized projectile. “Don’t worry, Aryu. I don’t think you were an intended target. I doubt they did anything to you.”
Aryu looked himself over anyway, convinced he was more to them than just a collectible. Eventually he stopped, finding nothing. Not even in the leathery folds of his wings. They hadn’t thought him powerful enough to require such a tactic.
Crystal began screaming even louder now as Nixon could be seen with her hand in his, bowing in a praying motion as she looked skyward with complete ambivalence to what Nixon was doing. The scene was unsettling. “What’s wrong with your mother? I’ve never seen anyone so…so…”
“Terrified?” he finished.
“Well, I’m not even sure that’s what it is. It seems to be even deeper than that.”
Sho agreed, “Very good, Aryu. You’re right, of course. It is deeper than fear and terror. Much deeper.”
“From losing her grasp on the Power? You don’t seem as bad as she does but you’re in the same boat, and Nixon looks fine.”
“Well, first off, I don’t think our large friend over there is affected by this cunning little attack. His abilities stem from somewhere beyond mine and
those of my mother. Also, although I appreciate the confidence you seem to have in my willingness to accept what has befallen us, I assure you I am horrified beyond reckoning. I have not been without command of the Power in ages, and the feeling is very disorientating. I also fear what will happen to this place and the life I help maintain here. If we can’t find a way to reverse what has been done, the thought of what could happen here absolutely crushes me.”
He looked at Aryu very seriously. “She is in much more pain than I could ever imagine. She has been a student and Embracer of the Power since she was very young, and has grown her abilities to go beyond simply conjuring havens and projectiles of energy. My mother, despite my undying love for her, was foolish enough to begin experiencing the Echoes of the Omnis, and it is the loss of that all-encompassing warmth of the Everything that has put her into this state, accompanied by the memory of the Est Vacuus.”
“Omnis? Est what?”
Sho looked at the ground in his look of removed non-interest and smirked. “No, no of course you don’t know. Forgive me, Aryu. I forget myself. The situation has me not thinking clearly. I can’t begin to tell you the full story about what I’m speaking of; someone with no grasp of the Power could never understand the whole story. Suffice to say there is a…presence, a level beyond what you know as the Power, and it has unfathomable levels of glory within it, but also there is a level of emptiness beyond even death that accompanies this ‘everything’ that must be experienced at the same time. It is the loss of the feeling of one and the memory of the feeling of the other that has done this to her. It may take some time to bring her out of the state she’s in right now.”
Aryu didn’t understand, but he supposed that was natural. Sho was speaking of things a young man from a small southern village could never grasp and likely shouldn’t try. "Do you think we have time?” Aryu asked as Crystal let loose another barrage of agony. “The Herald said an army is on the way.”
Sho’s unwillingness to answer said all that was needed, and once again Aryu was wrapped in the crushing terror of the army and what it was like to be in their path. He reached back and pulled the Shi Kaze from its sheath and allowed the distant, soothing comfort of its power to fill him with what little easing pleasantness it could. If he was going to die here, days from his homeland and his friend, it was not going to be on his knees begging to be released. The great and powerful sword in his hands reminded him of this, and it was doing an admirable job doing so.