by B. J. Keeton
“You are not the high priest,” said the man.
“Not quite,” Saryn said.
“He looks like that guy from before,” Chuckie said. “What did Ceril call him? The Archive?”
“I am indeed a brother unit to the Archive,” confirmed the man.
“What is your purpose?” Saryn asked.
“I am the Gatekeeper,” replied the hologram. “It is my function to oversee the successful completion of Instance travel within Meshin and across Jaronya. The platform on which I stand is the most coherent point of energy conversion.”
“So you're saying this is an Instance portal?” Chuckie asked.
“Indeed it is,” said the hologram. “I am afraid, however, that without the high priest’s permission, I cannot allow you access.”
“You have got to be kidding me,” Chuckie said. “What do we do, Saryn?”
Her eyes darted back and forth as she thought. What was it that Ceril had said in the Archive? He had some kind of authorization. “Would you scan our friend here?” Saryn asked. “He’s not the high priest, but I believe he has access to the Archive. Could that grant us use of the Instance portal?”
“That would indeed be possible,” said the Gatekeeper. “If you will all hold still for just a moment, please.” The grey-haired hologram projected a horizontal purple light from its eyes, and it looked from Chuckie to Saryn to Harlo to Ceril. As the light passed over Ceril, the hologram paused. Its eyes closed and reopened. If Saryn had thought it were possible, she would have thought the Gatekeeper tensed up. He said, “I am very sorry to have kept you waiting. Where is your destination?”
Saryn said, “I'm not sure, actually. I don't think our home Instance connects to this one.”
“I do not see how that is possible,” said the Gatekeeper. “I’m sure that you already know that Jaronya was originally constructed to serve as a hub, a nexus for the Charonic Archive. The entire Instance system was built around the understanding that no matter where an agent might be, he or she would be able to travel here and find a portal that would lead elsewhere. While not every portal goes everywhere, every portal goes somewhere.”
Saryn’s eyes widened as she tried to grasp at the logistics of such an undertaking. She could not fathom the amount of power, skill, and calculation it would have taken to make an Instance in which every point of known space would overlap. She did not think it was possible.
“That's impossible,” Saryn said.
“Not impossible,” said the Gatekeeper. “Just difficult.”
“Then you’re saying that Jaronya is some kind of, I don’t know, skeleton for the universe?”
“That is a fairly crude and unsophisticated way one could think about it,” the Gatekeeper said.
“How is that even possible?”
“It took many years to perfect the system, and even now there are sometimes anomalies, but it works well enough and is constantly being overseen and tweaked. The high priest functions as curator for the system.” The three of them shared a glance, but the Gatekeeper said nothing about it. “Now, where is your destination?”
Chuckie spoke up. “Erlon. Ennd's Academy.”
“I am sorry,” said the hologram, and the entire group let out a collective sigh. “Transportation to Erlon-Ennd's Academy is prohibited from this location by mandate of the Untouchable.”
“Excuse me?” Saryn said.
“The Untouchable has stated very clearly that connections to Erlon-Ennd’s Academy are unstable. All potential connections must be rerouted elsewhere for such transit.”
“Can you get us anywhere on Erlon?” Chuckie asked. “Anywhere will work.”
“I am sorry. The Untouchable has prohibited all travel to Erlon. Not just Erlon-Ennd’s Academy.”
“Who is this Untouchable?” Harlo asked. “He’s…” Chuckie elbowed her between the shoulder blades. “…making life hard on us here. Our friend is in trouble. We have to get to Erlon.”
“I see. The Untouchable is the head of the Charonic Archive, and his word is law. Your friend has a very,” the hologram paused almost imperceptibly, “unique set of credentials that grant his authorization; however, even they cannot override a standing mandate from the Untouchable.”
“He’s going to die if we don’t get back to Erlon,” Harlo pleaded.
Saryn asked, “Where is the Untouchable? Can we talk to him?”
“The Untouchable’s last known whereabouts are,” the hologram paused again, “a region called Ternia in Instance Erlon.”
“Last known?” Saryn said.
“I am sorry, my dear. I cannot provide any more information than that. Your dying friend’s authorization only goes so far, you see.”
“How far does it go?” Chuckie asked. “How close can you get us to Erlon?”
The grey-haired hologram smiled at Chuckie. “The Untouchable has prevented all travel to Erlon. It is within my programming, and I cannot alter nor contradict such a directive. However, your friend’s dire medical situation as well as a genetic signature similar to the Untouchable’s indicates that it is well within my parameters to transport you to an adjacent Instance from which you should find immediate transport to Erlon-Ennd’s Academy. Would that be sufficient?”
“If we keep up this Q&A, Saryn, the only thing Ceril is gonna be related to is a pile of maggots.” Chuckie turned to the hologram. “Yes,” Chuckie said. “That’d be dandy. The faster the better.”
“Very well,” the Gatekeeper said. Behind him, the air split. All of them had seen Instance portals for years now and had become quite used to them. This one was different. It was raw somehow, primal. Its energy wasn't contained by a frame or doorway. Bridges of energy crackled at its edges and leapt from one side to the other. The overbearing purpleness of Jaronya was interrupted by a cozy room illuminated by golden sunlight.
“Is it safe?” asked Harlo.
“Perfectly,” replied the Gatekeeper.
“Good enough for me,” Chuckie said. He adjusted Ceril in his arms and rushed through the portal. Harlo and Saryn followed.
“Thank you,” Saryn told the Gatekeeper as she passed. He nodded in return.
***
Golden sunlight beamed through high windows. The group found themselves in a circular office lined with bookshelves. A desk stood off to one side, and a meeting area with a couch and two chairs sat in front of it. In normal circumstances, the office would have been quite luxurious. Currently, however, the office was more terrifying than awe-inspiring.
Chuckie noticed the body on the chair first. It had been a woman, but she was headless and her skin had been flayed from her upper torso. Blood was everywhere. It coated the chair she was in as well as the couch opposite her, and there were random pools of it on the ground. Saryn screamed before Chuckie could bring anyone's attention to the dead woman.
Saryn had apparently found her head. Resting on the desk, bloody and skinless, its lipless grin and empty sockets stared at the newcomers.
Beneath the desk sat an even more disturbing sight: a man had been split in half, and his organs lay on the floor in clumps. Oddly, though, there was no blood, only a black gel coating everything near him. Upon seeing the head and the halved man, Harlo promptly threw up, which prompted Saryn to follow suit. Chuckie maintained his composure, but it was more out of stubbornness than anything else. He also didn’t want to vomit all over Ceril, who was blissfully unconscious to the discoveries.
Saryn gagged a few more times then asked, “What is this? Where are we?”
“Dunno,” Chuckie said. “But I'm not real excited to stick around.”
“I don't see why you would be,” Saryn said. “Who could or would do this to someone?”
“What about that?” Chuckie said, pointing to the headless woman.
Saryn choked back vomit again, but Harlo was not quite so lucky. She dry heaved because her earlier stint had emptied her of everything else she could have regurgitated. Saryn walked past the dead woman, barely daring a
look, and stood in front of the giant wooden door.
“Oh, no,” she said.
Harlo straightened from her heaving. “What?” she asked.
Saryn turned from the door, keeping her eyes on it, and sprinted back to the halved man in front of the desk. She leaned down and took hold of his head as carefully as she could. The last thing she wanted was to mutilate him any worse than he already was. Or to put her hand inside him.
“What the hell are you doing?” Chuckie asked.
“Checking something,” she said. Her eyes scanned the office and then dropped to the dead man in her hands. She flipped the half she was holding over, causing more of the black gel to ooze out of him, but she was able to get a good look at the dead man's profile. “It's Headmaster Squalt,” Saryn confirmed. “This must be his office.”
“What?” Harlo asked.
“It's him. It's Squalt,” Saryn repeated. “When the Gatekeeper sent us somewhere adjacent to Ennd's, the closest Instance must have been the Headmaster's office. There's always been a rumor that Academy headmasters were given private Instances, and now I guess we've confirmed that.”
“Who's the woman?” Chuckie asked.
Saryn looked at the body across the room and the head on the desk. “No idea,” she said. “You know, doc?”
“No way to tell,” Harlo said. “We'd have to run tests, and umm…”
“Yeah,” Saryn said. “Yeah.”
“So what do we do now?” Chuckie asked.
“Get back to Ennd's. If their bodies are still here in this condition, that means no one else knows about this.”
Chuckie nodded. “Can you get us out of here?”
Saryn said, “Yes. It's just the matter of putting in Ennd's code in the panel by the door.”
“And you have the code?” Harlo asked.
“Yeah, unless they’ve changed the code.” Saryn let go of the dead headmaster, wiped her hands on her pants, and walked determinedly to the door.
She keyed the code and waited. She heard a slight buzzing, and when she pulled on the door, it opened with a whuff-pop. She peered through the opening, then threw the door open as far as she could. “It's Ennd's,” she confirmed. “Let's go.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“—just not sure,” said a voice off to the left.
“What good are you then?” came a higher pitched voice from the right.
“I understand you're upset. The procedure was experimental in ways I can barely explain. Typical Blood Rites are one thing. His…” the voice on the left trailed off.
Ceril opened his eyes. Or at least he tried to. His eyelids moved about half of the distance he urged them to, and the light that streamed in was so bright that he only saw whiteness. He tried to speak, but his mouth could not form the words he wanted. He could not actually get sound to come out.
“His were what?” demanded the voice from the right.
“Complicated. And necessary. Don't forget that. Ceril’s situation is unprecedented in the order. Honestly, I’m amazed he’s not up and running by now. At this point, we shouldn’t be shocked if he doesn’t wake up at all. If he does, he might not…be his old self.”
Ceril had no idea what was going on. Why would he not be himself? What about him was unprecedented? Where was he, anyway? Who were these people?
Questions flooded his mind, but they were trapped by his unresponsive mouth. He forced his eyes wide, the light searing the nerves, but he held them open as wide as he could. He would pay for that with a headache later. The world remained unfocused. Once he had mastered his eyelids, he tried to speak again, to yell, and he finally made a sound.
To him, he said, “What do you mean? What's wrong with me?” To everyone else, he said “Mmnnnnng.”
Blurry shapes moved in from both sides of him, and Ceril thought they turned to face him.
“Did he—” said the voice to the right.
“He did. Thankfully,” said the voice from the left. “We have to determine how much damage was done, where he stands.”
“Right now?” asked the voice from the right.
“Preliminary determination is all. Awareness, muscle control, that sort of thing.”
“Okay.”
The voice from the left spoke very deliberately. “Ceril? Can you hear me?”
“Mmnnng,” Ceril said, meaning, Yes.
“Good,” said Left. “Can you see me?”
“Mmnnng.”
“I can't understand you, Ceril. Can you shake your head yes or no if you can see me?”
Ceril nodded.
“Can you move your right hand?” asked Left.
Ceril flexed his right arm, feeling the fingers clench into a fist.
“Good,” Left said. There was a slight pause, and the voice added, “What about the left one?”
Ceril flexed his left arm, again feeling the fingers clench into a fist.
What he felt and what actually happened, however, were not the same. The moment he felt his fist ball up, the figure to his left became obscured by a large, dark wave. The wave extended from Ceril’s bed, and even in his blurred vision, he saw it slam into the person on his left and push him against the room’s far wall.
Ceril heard Right say, “Are you all right, doctor?”
Doctor? Ceril thought. They found a doctor? On Jaronya?
Ceril's eyes were beginning to focus a little more, and he realized that he was no longer on Jaronya in a simple revelation: nothing around him was purple. Instead, the sterile whiteness of the room was so bright that it hurt his head. He blinked a few times and tried as hard as he could to make sense of the jumble of blurred colors to his left.
If he worked at it, Ceril could focus his eyes for a few seconds at a time. He could see Easter Harlo kneeling beside a larger form leaning against the wall. Ceril heard her say, “Doctor Saker? Answer me!” There was panic in her voice. She shook the larger figure, this Doctor Saker. Then, without warning, his vision blurred again.
Saker regained consciousness with a start and jumped to his feet. “I'm fine, Harlo. I'm fine.” He moved back toward Ceril and leaned down. He seemed to ignore whatever had happened to him, and said, “That could use a little fine-tuning, but it took. What about your left leg?”
Ceril flexed it. His toes wiggled. He even felt the big one pop.
“Good,” Saker said. “And your right one? But, wait, just hold on a second…” The man stepped back out of Ceril's field of vision. “You too, Harlo. Okay, now try, Ceril.”
Ceril wiggled the toes on his right foot, and another dark wave erupted from that side of the bed. It, too, struck the far wall, and then dissipated.
“All right,” the doctor said, “I guess that’s good. You’re responsive, at least.”
“W-what’s…gunn…on?” Ceril managed to say.
Harlo and Saker moved where he could see them again. They stood on opposite sides of his bed, framing his field of vision. They leaned in simultaneously, and Harlo spoke first.
“Ceril,” she said, “this is going to be a little hard to talk about, but we have to, okay? Do you think you’re up for it, or should we come back after you’ve had some rest?”
Ceril nodded. “Now’s…fine.”
“Good,” she continued. “What do you remember? What is the last thing you remember?”
Ceril blinked a few times. He thought back, trying to recall anything about where he had been or what he had been doing before he had woken up in the bright white room.
Fire. He remembered that there was fire. And pain. He said, “Fire. Purple. A fight maybe. A priest. We were being burned. The J-Jaronya…Fire…everywhere.” Ceril coughed. He breathed in and out rapidly, but it became harder to breathe as he thought about it. Harlo placed her hand on his chest, and it tingled lightly. It made him feel better, and he was able to catch his breath. After a few deep lungfuls, he asked, “Swinton?”
Harlo looked at Saker, who said, “He didn't make it.”
“What?” Ceril asked.
He saw Harlo flinch backward as his vision blurred again. Maybe he had yelled and expended too much energy on the emotion behind the question.
“Swinton was killed in the fire in the temple, Ceril,” Harlo said. “There was a lovely memorial service. His brother was there. That would have meant a lot to him, I think.”
“Saryn?” Ceril asked. “Chuckie?”
“They're fine, actually. Saryn’s back was burned,” Ceril tensed up, and Harlo spoke more deliberately, “but she’s fine. Chuckie was able to Conjure a shield that gave me enough time to heal her. Chuckie and I were really lucky; we barely had a scratch on us. Chuckie and Saryn have both spent a lot of time in here with you, but they stepped out just before the doctor arrived. Do you remember anything else?”
Ceril shook his head. “What…happened to me?”
“You, umm, won,” Harlo said. “If you consider this winning.”
Then, very quickly, Harlo abridged the story of what had happened to them in the temple, the aftermath of their fight, and how they had found their way back to Erlon. Ceril listened in silence.
“Are you serious?” he asked when she was finished.
Harlo nodded. “Yeah, that about covers it.”
Doctor Saker cleared his throat. “Ceril, I’d like your comments on…well, what happened in here a few moments ago.”
“I don't know what you mean.”
“How well can you see?” the doctor asked.
“Not well. I see blurs, colors. You’re both standing there, but I can't see your faces.”
“Can you see your body?”
Ceril looked down. “Yeah, but I’m as blurry as you are.”
The doctor nodded. “Ceril, the fight you had with the high priest was intense. Traumatic. You almost didn't survive. Do you remember anything about it?”
Again, Ceril thought. He remembered pain. Not much else. “Pain,” Ceril told him.
“Nothing more specific than that?”