Arcana Universalis: Terminus

by Chris J. Randolph

  Caleb seriously doubted a conversation in Arkesh had occurred in Imperium space for more than ten millennia. In his estimation, that made this something of an event in bookworm history, but he tried not to let it swell his sense of self-worth.

  She tilted her head in that slightly alien way again and spoke. The accent and song were strange, giving the language a vibrance and vigour that Caleb’s professors never approached, but he could understand much more than he’d expected. It took some effort and thought, but he could pick out quite a lot of meaning.

  Bibbs crept forward and stopped a few yards away, wisely hidden behind a stone column where he wouldn’t appear intimidating. “You understand that gibberish?”

  “I do,” Caleb said. “It’s Arkesh. A variant I’ve never encountered… some of the retroflexes have become trills, and the vowels appear to have shifted downward. Something funny about the tense structure, too…”

  “Caleb!”

  “But yes, it’s Arkesh.”

  “So what did she say?”

  Caleb smirked back at him. “She says I talk funny.”

  He turned his attention back to the tiny creature and cleared his throat. “I am referred to as Caleb. What is your appellation?”

  Her great eyes squinted. “Do you [designate / mean] my name? Hmmm… Oh [plural noun and adjective], it’s been so [distant / long].”

  He gave her another very warm smile, and realized this still wouldn’t be a walk in the park. “I apologize. I did not intend to ummm… apply undue pressure.”

  “No, silly human,” she said while holding either side of her head. “It’s just so [mathematical / circuitous / difficult] to remember.”

  “How long have you been here?”

  She held up a finger, then flew off in a blur. Caleb watched the little streak of light race around the chamber several times, and then return. “8,831,882 days.”

  Caleb ran the words through his head a second time and then a third, making sure he hadn’t made some vast error in translation. No, she had said eight million. He performed a quick and sloppy calculation, and mumbled in Imperial, “23,000 years? That’s… nearly the age of the Imperium.”

  “What’s that?” Bibbs asked.

  “She claims she’s been here for more than 23,000 years.”

  “Is that even possible?”

  Caleb shrugged and thought back through his theriology courses. “Maybe. Some species can live indefinitely given the right conditions. The Grim, aurem, dragons, creptids, bronzemen, risek, anguish, pixies…”

  He halted sharply mid-list and looked back down at the curious little creature. “I mean no offense, but are you a pixie?”

  She smiled and her head bobbed up and down. “Yes, yes! Pixie.”

  “Well, I’ll be damned,” Caleb said. “She’s a pixie. Whole race was supposed to have died out during the third emperor’s reign, but here you are, holed up in cave on some planet in the middle of nowhere.”

  “For what reason are you imprisoned here?” he asked.

  She looked flustered again. “I [am obligated to / must] remember,” she said.“Not imprisoned. There was [anger / fire], and [wailing / screaming / modern poetry], and [smoke / ghosts] everywhere.” Emotions danced all over her face as she fought to recall. “My brother? Yes, my brother [hid / buried] me here to keep me safe. He said, ‘Too dangerous outside. I’ll return for you once the [purge / massacre / harvest] is past. Stay here, Alia…’”

  And her face lit up. “Alia! My name is Alia Sarkady. I remembered!”

  Caleb offered a stately bow just as he’d been trained in the academy, and summoned a line from a very old play. “I am exceedingly honoured to make your acquaintance, Lady Alia Sarkady. The universe’s provenance smile upon you.”

  At that, Alia seemed quite pleased. She offered her own miniature bow in return and said, “And I am honoured to make yours, Caleb Human. You…” With a flutter of her glistening wings, she floated up into the air and peered first into Caleb’s left eye, then his right. “You are a good man. A funny talker, but good. I’m not yet certain about your [decoy / clansman / body guard].”

  “Cabe,” Bibbs said from behind his column. He held the tonality pendant up and Caleb could see it dimly pulsing in the darkness.

  “I’m afraid duty requires our attention, Alia. We must evacuate this place. You should accompany us.”

  “Hmmmm…” she said, momentarily transcending language barriers. “I’m [supposed / oath bound] to wait for my brother… but it has been a long time. Will you [surround / protect] me, Caleb Human?”

  He thought for a moment, and with reasonable confidence he’d understood her correctly, said, “With my life.”

  Satisfied, Alia landed on his shoulder and whispered into his ear. “Then it’s [settled / decided / divinely ordained]. Just know, I will hold you to your [blood pact / promise].”

  Caleb gave the cavern one last wistful look, still searching for some hidden treasure and still finding only treasureless-trove. A lot of work had gone into cracking that door and his disappointment was hard to cast aside. He even heard Bibbs, the eternal optimist, let out a dejected sigh.

  Bibbs finally allowed the flame in his hand to die, and he walked by Caleb in shadow. Caleb too severed his wisp’s umbilicus, causing it to spin, sputter and finally die in a shower of sparks. Then, after a moment ripe with longing for treasures unfound, he turned and followed his partner to the door.

  As they stepped out of the cavern, the light of day was blinding. The cold and dank gave way once again to the warm of Spring and the scent of abundant flowers. Alia, perched on Caleb’s shoulder, was in a state of total wonder as if she’d never seen anything outside the cavern before.

  Caleb looked down at her mesmerized expression and couldn’t help but feel it too. For just a moment, his disappointment faded and there was only a childlike joy at the natural world.

  Bibbs was a few steps away, holding the tonality pendant up in front of him. He waved his hand above the jewel and the air there shimmered and twinkled, then Harvid’s grizzled visage emerged from the light.

  “Apprentice Bibbs, kind of you to check in.”

  “We were exploring a small cave to determine if the Eurisko’s crew could have taken shelter inside, and it must have blocked tonality.”

  “Hmph,” Harvid hmphed, then was silent for some time. “No matter. Adept Tarkanian and his team found parts of the wreckage at the Alpha site. We’re being redeployed to help gather what’s left. Return to the basecamp at once.”

  The image of Harvid blinked out of existence.

  Bibbs looked concerned. “Parts of the wreckage. What’s left. Doesn’t sound very promising.”

  “No, not at all,” Caleb agreed. “Didn’t mention survivors, either.”

  They both turned toward the East and began to walk back the way they came, while Alia delighted in all the sights and sounds that surrounded her.

  “I have a terrible feeling,” Bibbs added, “that today’s going to get worse before it gets better.”

  And as they walked, Caleb worried that Bibbs might have some talent as a Seer as well.

  Book I — Third Fragment

  The two apprentices made good time on their return to the landing site. The sun drifted toward their backs and tinted the world in amber while the air acquired a pleasant chill, and the pixie named Alia Sarkady flitted about, discovering the entire world anew.

  Alia’s antics–the way she stalked up on unsuspecting flowers and the occasional hopping mammal like a hunter on safari–were a constant source of amusement for Caleb. These excursions all ended the same way: in surprise and an inordinate amount of fright, after which she sought shelter beneath Caleb’s wide collar. When she was finally calm again, she’d venture out and repeat the entire process beat for beat.

  While she was off examining a particularly ordinary rock with the utmost concern, Caleb looked to Bibbs and said, “You don’t like her, do you?”

  The truth of it was ob
vious enough. Whenever she was near, Bibbs’ shoulders drew together and his jaw tightened, and each time she moved out of earshot, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  “I don’t know,” Bibbs said while watching her with suspicious eyes. “I have a lot of questions.”

  “Such as?”

  “Why was she locked up like that, and why on this boondock grass ball of all places?” He gave the landscape around them a perfunctory look and continued, “Do you see any ruins, Cabe? Roads, walls, anything at all?”

  “Not a thing,” Caleb replied, “but a lot can change in twenty millennia. From what she described, I think something terrible happened on this world. Something positively horrific. Perhaps it was enough to wipe out any trace of civilization.”

  “I don’t know,” Bibbs said again. “There are just too many loose pieces and none of them fit together. We… never mind.”

  “What were you going to say? Out with it, man.”

  Bibbs leaned closer and said in a conspiratorial whisper, “We should leave her behind. Cut her loose.”

  “That’s damned heartless.”

  Bibbs looked melodramatically wounded. “For her sake. Have you considered Doctrine?”

  “What of it?”

  “Don’t be dense. Her species is intrinsically potent, and hasn’t been seen in how many thousand years? If she’s discovered aboard the ship, they’ll lock her up in a laboratory and vivisect her… or worse.”

  Caleb had trouble imagining what could possibly be worse, but he took Bibbs at his word. Not that it mattered; his mind was already made up. “I’ll just have to make sure no one discovers her.”

  Bibbs’ exasperation swelled to epic proportions and began to waft across the landscape, while in the distance, Alia had tired of interrogating her rock and was slowly wandering back in a zig-zag.

  “Look,” Caleb said, “I made a promise and I intend to keep it, for better or worse. I thought you of all people would understand that.”

  Caleb watched carefully as the words struck his friend, and the reaction was swift. He looked at first like a man splashed with ice cold water, and that was followed by a flash of fury and then begrudging agreement, all in the span of a second. A heavy burden stirred just beneath the surface where Bibbs kept it secret and safe.

  Caleb didn’t even have to say the word sister. His argument was already won.

  “Alright, and how do you intend to smuggle her aboard.”

  Caleb lifted a glass vial from his pocket. “Hermetic specimen bottle. Should shield even something like her from detection.”

  A smirk overtook Bibbs’ frustration. “Just like the mandala blossoms you picked on Potessa.”

  “Exactly.”

  The muscles on either side of Bibbs’ wide jaw flexed, and he pursed his thin lips. “Alright,” he finally said. “I don’t like it, but I’m on board.”

  “Just what I wanted to hear,” Caleb replied.

  Then something strange happened. The tonality pendant around Bibbs’ neck flashed a few times and turned black as tar. They both stopped in their tracks, and Bibbs lifted the pendant up in front of his face, then he peered into the stone with a look of deep consternation.

  “What’s that then?”

  Bibbs shrugged and said, “Don’t know.” He waved his hand in front of the device several times without effect. “It’s just dead.”

  “It’s not like these things to burn out on their own,” Caleb said, looking for and finding a familiar ridge nearby. “We’re nearly back to basecamp, though. Maybe someone there can fix it.”

  Despite his unusually optimistic outlook, the situation struck Caleb as awfully peculiar and he couldn’t put it out of his head. He’d heard of tonality pendants dying but only in the rarest conditions. During the Anabasis Stellarum, Victor the Deceiver’s second legion managed to pierce the Blackened Casket on Shinkuma, and all of their tonality devices spontaneously burst like dropped wine glasses, along with every other artifact on the bloody planet. Caleb also vaguely recalled a research vessel that reported its entire collection of tonality equipment ruined after passing through a solar flare.

  The two incidents had one thing in common: an instantaneous release of immense stored power.

  He turned and saw Alia approaching, moving slowly through the air and weaving a drunken pattern. “Oh, my head hurts,” she said.

  Caleb watched her with growing worry, then pulled the compass from his pocket and flipped open its lid. The three needles within were moving erratically, seeming to lock onto something one moment, only to wheel about in another direction the next or spin aimlessly around. “I think we have a problem,” he said.

  Bibbs raised an ear skyward. “Agreed. You hear that?”

  Caleb focused, then he heard it too. It was a throaty howl like a ruptured steam pipe, or a wounded mammoth with impossibly large lungs, and it was coming from the direction of the basecamp. It went on for nearly a minute, then stopped with a thump that echoed repeatedly off the rolling hills.

  “What in the dragon’s name was that?”

  Caleb shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest.”

  As the last word escaped his lips, Alia set down uneasily on his shoulder, groaning all the way. “I don’t feel very good, Caleb Human,” she said.

  He considered for a moment, then once again retrieved the specimen bottle from his pocket and unlatched its lid. He waved its open mouth in Alia’s direction and said, “I believe it will be safer for you inside of this vessel.”

  He expected more argument from the tiny blue pixie, but she was so groggy and sore-headed that she simply climbed inside and waved for him to seal it. With a couple quick motions, he locked the lid back in place and Alia immediately looked relieved.

  Caleb gently placed the bottle back in his pocket and looked to Bibbs, who was staring into the distance. His stance seemed outwardly relaxed and his face peaceful, but his hands were in motion, fingers curling and stretching in an exercise Caleb recognized as the Nine Blades of Dariesh. Bibbs was preparing for a fight.

  Caleb followed his partner’s gaze and saw a plume of smoke on the horizon. The charcoal tufts of it churned and coughed up into the empty sky.

  Nothing else needed saying; they both turned toward the camp and set off at a quick pace. For long minutes, Caleb heard nothing but his boots crunching in the grass and his own metered breath, somehow distant and detached.

  There was no imagining of horrible creatures. No litany of curses. No questions without answers. There were only the two sets of sounds in syncopated rhythm–grassblades mashed down and splaying underfoot, and the needful rush of air through lips and over teeth–together wrapped up in a dulling layer of gauze.

  Bibbs and Caleb crested the final ridge and came to a halt, looking out over the small valley beyond. The landscape swooped down beneath them in a steep curve that led to the basecamp, and there at the foot of the swelling plume, in the patchy shade it created, lay two dozen wounded men amid a scattering of bronze shrapnel.

  “Spiritus have mercy,” Bibbs said.

  Their caution shattered and they covered the final stretch at full sprint. Thighs burning and chests heaving, they came to the ruined basecamp just as the last embers of their stamina sputtered and died. Their crewmates littered the field, a few silent and still, many others moaning wordlessly as they clutched at ragged, bloody gashes.

  The bronze shards were everywhere like the fallen leaves of an oak in late Autumn, and at their center sat the husk of the gate anchor, broken and split like a tree trunk struck by lightning. A silken ribbon of black smoke rose out of it that rippled and curled a few feet on, then bubbled and branched ever upward.

  With his heart thumping in his chest, his throat, his eyes, Caleb stared in disbelief. “What in the Grim hell could do this?” he asked on laboured breaths.

  Bibbs merely shook his head.

  Caleb’s brain scrabbled at possible answers, slipping off one after another without managing to find purchase. His focus move
d swiftly from the shrapnel on the ground to the smoke, all across the empty landscape and back again, but there were no more clues in sight. There were no attackers, no marks of battle, nothing but the wounded men and the destroyed gate anchor.

  Bibbs had an unerring presence of mind; he snatched up an armload of medical supplies from inside the chest and began treating the wounded as best he could, while Caleb floated about, lost in a twilit wasteland between confusion and terror.

  “Gate anchor.” Caleb’s lips formed the words but his throat gave them no voice. He stumbled toward the hateful device in a daze, one foot and then the other placed aimlessly like a sleepwalker or a drunk. He glimpsed the artifact through the twisting smoke, the torn edges of its bronze skin glinting in the low evening sunlight, and in his head he once again heard the long, horrid cry that was somehow part of this massacre.

  Smoke enveloped him as he approached and all the world grew dark. On that shadowy canvas, he saw fleeting images dredged up from his memory, technical diagrams of the device’s innards and operation which flitted away as quickly as they appeared. Its core was just a set of tuned metal rings suspended in an oblong resonance chamber. Such a simple design. So elegant. So elementary.

  So false.

  His eyes burned. Smoke filled his mouth and nose, the acrid taste of burnt oil and molten metal smothering his palate. There was a hint of something else there, a familiar tang which didn’t belong, but it was subtle, buried and near impossible to grasp hold of.

  He penetrated the darkness slowly and the open end of the gate anchor loomed up before him, its shell torn into radiating blades like battered flower petals. Their surfaces bore ruined sigils that once had been wards of protection. Of containment. And there within the gaping cavity, suspended in a webwork of fluid-filled tubes, sat one half of a human brain.

  The subtle smell was blood.

  Caleb choked back a scream and toppled over in horror. His tailbone met grass and he clawed at the soil, lurching away from the anchor in fits and starts. His mouth twitched around incomplete words while a terrible new knowledge infected him, puzzle pieces tumbling out of the shadows and slotting into place, and he understood.